“TV will never be a serious competitor for radio because people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen; the average American family hasn’t time for it.” – Author Unknown, from New York Times, 1939
Life is meant to be lived, not watched. To get started living your own life rather than watching others live theirs, consider its impact on your life.
Ten Reasons to Watch Less Television
1. It is influencing your worldview. Anybody who has ever been a policeman, a lawyer, a psychiatrist, an ER doctor, or an FBI agent will attest to the truth that television does not accurately portray their life. In almost all aspects, television rarely depicts the world and life accurately. Too much television results in disillusionment about what to expect from the world around us. This can most commonly be seen in people’s expectations of love, romance, and sexuality.
2. It is influencing your spending habits. If you think you are immune (or too smart) to be influenced by the power of advertisements, you are wrong. Corporations do not spend trillions of dollars in advertising hoping to influence you. They spend trillions of dollars because they know they will influence you.
3. It is taking you away from the real people all around you. The characters on television are not real. They are thought up in an office building and given life on a piece of paper. In contrast, you are surrounded every day by real people living real lives. These real people are facing real problems. They need you. And you need them. Limit your kids’ screen time.
4. It is robbing you of precious mental energy. When your television is on, your concentration is held hostage. Your mental energy is drawn into the screen and your ability to control it is given up.
5. It is costing you money. Americans spend over $6 billion per year just paying for the electricity to power their television sets. Add in the cost of cable/satellite bills, dvd’s, movie subscriptions, peripherals … and we’re starting to talk about real money.
6. It impairs your capacity for rational thought. TV oversimplifies reality. It presents subjects in a matter of minutes and everything is nicely wrapped up at the end. This harms clear thinking by conditioning you to expect that most problems have a simple, clear solution that can be implemented in 60 minutes or less.
7. It is bad for your health. Numerous studies draw direct parallels between excessive television watching and obesity.
8. It results in less satisfaction with life. According to the Journal of Economic Psychology, TV viewers report lower life satisfaction, higher material aspirations, and more anxiety.
9. It results in less sex. Couples who keep a TV in the bedroom have sex half as often as those who don’t. And if you ask me, that should be reason enough.
10. Its opportunity cost is too great. The average American watched an average of 5.1 hours of television per day in 2009. That’s time you could have spent exercising, eating a meal together, entertaining, enjoying nature, meditating, enjoying a hobby, reading a book, or fulfilling a dream.
sumguy says
but i love my tv
Rob Morgan says
Good points. On the other hand, TV enables me to “travel” to Europe to the Monaco Grand Prix or “tour” the island of Madeira where my grandmother grew up. And thanks to DVR, I can record the good stuff and skip commercials. It’s not that I haven’t considered cancelling the cable service at times, but chose instead to exercise self control and use the most important button on the remote: OFF.
Teri says
TV isn’t evil. It is a tool that can serve a good purpose when you are in control over it. Banishing it from your home or life and assuming that’s the right choice for everyone is kind of elitist. Why I like TV better than you… sometimes: http://wp.me/s2nzPY-129
Mike Fine says
Check out http://www.titovalenti.com/ for an interesting take on this subject… Given the audience here, I figured I’d post even though as a piece of fiction it works better when the reader doesn’t explicitly know about the connection to TV.
Hirsty says
All good reasons to watch less TV but it’s important not to demonised all TV. Each weekday I watch BBC Newsnight, I think it’s important to stay informed. I also watch documentary, primarily on BBC 4, Jonathan Meades is a brilliant broadcaster for instance. And I can’t do without Match of the Day on Saturday night to keep up with the football.
The point is be selective with TV, plan what to watch and try not to just sit down for the night and let it wash over you.
Ursula from Great Relaxation says
All ten reasons a really good. But in my mind, the most important is number three. People really should spend less time in front of the TV or computer screen and spend more time outside with real people like family or friends.
Nicki Savantes says
I chose not to have a television in my home more than 20 years ago (although I did watch an hour or so a day as a kid, and I obviously still have a computer), basically because of the empty feeling it left me with, and a sense of dissatisfaction for time “not well spent” whenever I let myself be “suckered in”.
Since I had a kid, I have been struggling off and on with the negative/positive indoctrination/education aspects of television. My four year old now gets twice 30 minutes a day watching kid DVDs. I try to supply him with relatively harmless content (like Winnie the Pooh and Thomas & Friends). He had no screen time before he was 2. So we’re kind of on the low end of the television watching spectrum…
Unsure where to take this in the future (darling son is of course always clamouring for more!), I did some basic internet reseach and put together some references to (spine chilling) scientific conclusions in an article (a mega post unfortunately: I do not yet possess Joshua’s flair for saying it all in a few hundred words!) about why television time is definitely “evil” for kids. Folks here might be interested in taking a look…
Susie says
People are always totally shocked by our lack of a TV set. We’ve had at least 3 friends offer us one, as if out lives aren’t complete without it. We watch the BBC online which is great as there are no ads, the program quality is exceptional and you simply can’t channel-hop, something which I used to spend most of my TV time doing!
Summer Fields says
I rarely watch T.V. anyhow, but I can’t really agree that it is simply no good for anything. There are so many things to be learned from everything! I generally only watch the History and Science Channels and I don’t necessarily find anything wrong with that… I mean, they present so much info that you just probably won’t find any where else! If only silly shows like most reality T.V. series were banned. I mean, T.V. really is the same as books, and very similar to the internet…
Melissa says
Jim Trelease’s Read Aloud Handbook gives a lot of research about how turning off the tv can help children in so many ways, but especially with reading skills:
http://www.amazon.com/Read-Aloud-Handbook-Sixth-Jim-Trelease/dp/0143037390/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279762963&sr=8-1