(thread for geezers only, I suppose)
I hadn’t thought about this in years, but I remember when we got our first color TV. There was widespread worry that sitting too close to the set will permanently damage your eyes. Mom went on the nut whenever she saw us sitting within four feet or so of the set.
Anyone else have this experience?
What did your mom wig out about back in the day?
mmm
My mom always insisted that we sit several feet away from the set. We didn’t get color tv until 71 or 72. My parents had seen bad color sets at several of their friends house years earlier and weren’t impressed.
iirc correctly radiation was a concern back then. I seem to recall mom worrying about it. Don’t want cancer from your tv. 
Dunno why you’re specifying “geezers” only, I was told that less than twenty years ago as a kid. Although it was my grandmother rather than mother.
(Then again my mother is an optometrist so relatively unlikely to make stuff up regarding eyes lol)
Early color TVs did, in fact, emit dangerous amounts of X-Rays. So, not sitting close wasn’t such a bad idea. Granted, much of the X-Rays were emitted from the sides, but that doesn’t invalidate the idea.
I was told I would get square eyes if I sat too close to the TV.
Well? What shape are your eyes in now?
ditto on the microwave, we got our first in 1975 and was told to leave the room as soon as we pushed the start button actually it was a rotary dial but you get the picture!
Turn off that TV is it is lightning and thundering out!
(Sure enough, I was at my aunt’s house when lightning did indeed hit their antenna on the roof and blow that TV to smithereens! Scared the bejesus out of all of us.)
Now I wonder if the same problem exists with cable?
I think you were also supposed to hang up the (landline) phone when there was lightning - again, the fear of getting zapped, though not sure if I ever heard of that happening.
Sitting too close was bad for your eyes, and the radiation was bad for the family jewels and you might get cancer.
Nothing especially dangerous about color TVs though.
You guys had color TV? 
We were told not to sit close to our B&W TV because it would ruin our eyes.
Oh god yes. We got “don’t sit close to the TV”, “don’t read in low light”, “unplug everything when you go on vacation”, “turn off your TV/radio/phone when there’s lightning”. Did any of these have legit purpose at one time, or were they old wives’ tales from the start.
I don’t remember my mother being worried about my eyes, but she was worried about the Xrays, and why not? Electron beam slamming into a solid? That’s othewise known as an Xray tube.
How many of you were not allowed to go swimming for one hour after eating?
I remember government warnings about this, never mind my mother.
That one was pretty common. I don’t think there’s any confirmed cases of people developing abdominal muscle cramps from swimming within an hour after eating. But if that could happen, it would be a good thing to avoid. I had those cramps come with a bad case of the flu. If I’d been swimming I would have drowned. So I follow the rule that you don’t go swimming for one hour after you’ve had the flu.
I think my mom told me about our b/w set ruining my eyes about 1955.
landline phones with a corded handset can be dangerous and people have been electrocuted that way. i’ve seen arcs come out into the room from landline phonejacks during a lightning storm.
cables can get hit by lightning and zap your tv.
Yes, us. And no sitting within 6’ of the color TV. This was in the late 60s / early 70s.
Also, no going to bed with your hair wet (from shower / bath) because - get this - you can go blind. Anyone else have that mom’s tale told to you?
We got a bit of that sort of thing.
Not sitting to close to a TV & reading in low light conditions were family favorites.
Lightning zapping people using landline phones does happen(Snopes).
I have read that it used to be a bigger problem in Australia (prior to the mid-1970’s) as home phone lines weren’t earthed in the same way domestic power lines were/are now.
Often they were earthed to the closest metal waterpipe so we were also told not to be in the bath or shower if there was a storm about.
There is some reality behind this myth. Back in the 1960s, a bunch of GE color TVs were produced with a misaligned shield over one of the vacuum tubes inside the set. The result was that the sets leaked rather significant levels of X-rays. The TVs were all recalled, though thousands of them were never found. Since the X-rays were emitted mostly downward at an angle, folks across the room were safe. Not so for children sitting on the floor close to the set, though. This was highly publicized at the time, and really cemented in the public eye that sitting too close to a color TV was bad for you (even though the GE problem had been fixed).
Over time the details got lost, and TV sets up through the mid 70s or so did give off fairly high levels of X-rays (at least by modern standards), so there was still some truth to the idea that sitting too close to the TV was bad for you, even if the GE problem was all but forgotten by then. Improvements during the 70s reduced the levels of X-rays to the point where TVs were no longer a real hazard, but the idea that you shouldn’t sit too close to one continued well into the 80s, by my recollection. It didn’t really die completely until flat screens replaced CRTs.
My Mom often told us his, especially when we stayed up late Friday nights, to watch Tarzan/Sherlock Holmes/Monster movies.
But she attributed it to eyestrain.