Here's a stat that stopped me cold: a study in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience found that watching reality TV actually reduces activity in the part of your brain responsible for empathy. Scripted shows? They increase it. That's not just a preference thing, that's a measurable difference in how we process other people's pain and joy. Now, I know scripted TV has its own problems, like violence or unrealistic standards. But here's the key distinction: scripted shows are clearly fiction. You know the characters are actors, the drama is written. Reality TV blurs that line. It presents manufactured conflict as real life, and that's more harmful because it trains us to see actual people as characters in a drama, not as humans with real feelings. That's a unique, insidious harm.