Seems hard to
believe, but many people could have an extra 2 months in 2014 and every other
year. How? By reducing the amount of time they watch television. I made this
commitment for 2014 simply because it felt like a good thing to do, but when I
actually looked at some statistics and negative effects of television, I was
blown away and knew I had to explore this further.
Did you know
that the average American spends over five hours every day watching TV? That’s
over two months a year, nine years in a lifetime! Wow. I am quite sure it’s
pretty similar in the rest of the Western world… Statistics also show that 54%
of 4-6 year-olds who, when asked to choose between watching TV and spending
time with their fathers, preferred television. Yikes! And did you also know
that watching television makes us more passive, fat and materialistic? Oh oh... (You can see more about this in a great article here).
Now I don’t want
to make this post all about how evil television is, because it does have
positives as well (a good documentary can facilitate learning, a talent show
may inspire us to share our talents with the world, it can be relaxing to watch
our favorite show or exciting to watch our favorite teams play….), but because
this is a post about reducing TV time, I will focus more an a couple of the
negatives I find most important.
First of all, television
programming shapes our minds much more than we think. For example, in a movie
or TV show, something is always happening, the action sequences are fast, there
are virtually no breaks. In fact, it has been proven that movie shots are
getting shorter, as prior to the 1960s, the average shot length was 8-11
seconds, but now it is something like 4-6 seconds. This results in us
subconsciously believing that our lives should also take place at this pace,
and when they don’t, we start thinking something is wrong. And we get restless,
rob ourselves of valuable rest and contemplation time, etc. Professor Jon
Kabat-Zinn likes to say that as a species we are increasingly turning from “human
beings” into “human doings,” and I believe television is a big reason for this.
Second, and this
goes hand-in-hand with the first one, television negatively affects our view of
the world. Think of all the violence we see, or of all the negative stories on
the news. Instead of seeing the world as a friendly place full of people who
want to help us (see previous post :-), we start seeing the world as a
dangerous place where people and nature need to be feared. Steve Chandler, the
author of the excellent “100 Ways To Motivate Yourself,” says the following in
his book:
If we realized exactly how much vulgar, pessimistic, and
manipulative negativity was deliberately packed into every daily newspaper and
most television shows and Hollywood movies, we
would resist the temptation to flood our brains with their garbage. Most of us
are more particular about what we put in our automobile’s gas tank than we are
about what we put in our own brain every night. We passively feed ourselves
with stories about serial killers and violent crime without any conscious
awareness of the choice we’re making.
Uff.
And third, television
(and newspapers and the Internet…) robs us of time we could spend much more
positively. Think of all the things you could do with an extra one to two hours
per day: get more sleep, read or write a book, exercise, talk with family or
friends, cook a healthy meal. The list is endless. And think how much better
you’d feel after one of those activities.
So now that
we’ve pointed out some good reasons to reduce TV time, let’s talk about the
best ways to actually accomplish that. As with most things, I am a big believer
in starting small, in baby steps. I would start by making a review of all the
programs you watch and making a list of the reasons you watch particular
programs and the benefits and negatives they bring. Then try a week or two
without one or two programs at the bottom of your list, and replace the time
with a positive activity of your choice. And simply see where this takes you.
So as 2014 is
off to a roaring start, let’s get more conscious about the content we allow
into our lives, let’s cut down on television a bit, and let’s fill this newly
found time with positive activities!
Tomas
PS: While doing a bit of research for this post, I came across some funny or inspiring TV related quotes that I thought I’d share here as well:
Television is a medium because anything
well done is rare.
Fred Allen
If you’re watching too much television and
you know it, you might find it useful to ask this one question: “Which side of
the glass do I want to live on?”
Steve Chandler
I find television very educating. Every
time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
Grouch Marx
In Beverly
Hills
Woody Allen
