Monday, April 24 begins TV Turnoff Week. The TV Turnoff Network is asking us to ditch the television for a week. Not convinced you need to turn off your television for a week? How about these stats:
1) The average American home has the TV on for a total of 7 hours, 40 minutes per day.
2) The average American watches 4 hours of TV per day.
3) The average American child UNDER 6 spends a total of 2 hours per day watching some type of screen media.
4) The average parent spends 38.5 minutes per WEEK in meaningful conversation with their children.
5) 54% of 4-6 year olds say they would rather spend time watching TV than spend time with their fathers.
6) Between 1993 and 1996 the percentage of homicides covered by television news increased 721%. During the same period, actual homicides decreased by 20%.
As someone who is greatly concerned with mental health issues, I am fully convinced that television can really contribute to an exacerbation of mental illness symptoms, especially in the environment that exists following 9/11. But as the above statistics show, even prior to the terrorist attacks of 2001, network news shows were greatly increasing coverage of homicides to the public.
Television is lying to you, people. For decades, television has told us that we all have to look the same, act the same, and that we are never good enough. We never spend enough money. Everyone else has (fill in the blank with a tempting product) but us. We should empty our bank accounts to keep up with our neighbors, claim many TV commercials. If we believed what TV showed us, we would all be in imminent danger of death by violence every time we walk out the door. Everything we eat or buy would be potentially life threatening.
Sex is touted as a "right". Anyone trying to live a chaste life is ridiculed and laughed at. A fulfilling early adulthood should be spent sleeping around. Porn is seen as a healthy supplement because life without sex is not possible. In TV land, women are sexual objects, catty and competitive. Men are bumbling idiots unnecessary to the life of women and children.
Whitedot reminds us that the last generation to grow up without TV is quickly dying off. They *gasp* made up their own childhood games and learned to get along with each other because they were forced to live without constant entertainment. They did not need gobs of "activities" organized by adults living their lives through their children and watching for every litigious action that might take place. They did the job of children--they invented. They lived. They PLAYED!
Do you have any sense of how rich our lives would be without all the media we are subjected to today? Do you have any idea of the risk we take in turning our brains and opinions over to television? If Nazi Germany can thrive with the propaganda machine available to it in the 1930's, imagine what a similarly minded tyrant could do today.
Learn to form your own opinions. Learn to live your own life.
TURN OFF THE TV!
10 comments:
I agree. We rarely watch TV and usually only watch movies together as a family.
TV is desensitizing generations to violence and morals.
I think you are right. Its so all-pervasive, that it makes its so-called "values" seem normal to millions.
I'll join in this Turnoff TV Week!
Great!
To turn my TV off I would first have to turn it on. But I did feel inspired to make a little index card art piece about this. You'll find it at the blog under the title "indexcardart#3 turn off tv week"
Owen, you have quite a creative blog going there!
Good idea. During Lent I cut down on my TV intake and found that I got a lot more done. I'd rather read or listen to good music than watch dreck like "American Idol" -- and isn't THAT an appropriate name -- than spend time in front of the boob tube. There are a few good shows -- and movies -- that I tape so I can eliminate the ads, but in general, the less TV the better.
I agree. "American Idol" is an appropriate title! TV is such a time waster, and that is the least of it.
Turn off the TV week may be over, but I say AMEN! to its goals. If only we could have a "throw out your TV month" or something.
Its sad how people will organize thier whole living rooms around the TV so you can see it from any seat in the room. What does that tell you about how people organize thier lives?
Exactly. I like your idea. "Throw away the Television Month"! :)
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