We are planning to send our TV on vacation for one month to break the whole family of the habit.
Our 3 year old loves TV. Loves it. I like TV a lot myself, to be frank. Nonetheless I’m pretty sure that TV is a manifestation of the devil here on earth. I hate how dependant on it I am for times when I need my kid to be quiet and out from underfoot. I hate the glazed look she gets when she’s watching.
So TV. Gone for a month. Anyone out there living without TV? Rasing kids without TV? Is this going to be the best thing I’ve ever done for my kid, or what?
No kids here, but I hardly ever watch television. I went 15 years without one, and just got into the habit of doing other things instead. I have several hobbies that require fairly intense dedication and are time-consuming, so I’m never bored. But I haven’t seen just about anything you’d care to name in prime time since the mid-'70s. I don’t hate television, it just doesn’t occur to me to want to watch it.
Of course we have a TV, and my wife watches some programs. We watch things on HGTV and the Food Network during supper. But I never hang out in the living room veg-ing out on the tube. There are no “must-see” programs for me.
I think it’ll be a good thing; the times in my life when I’ve gone without a TV I’ve always invariably read more, which I suppose is a good. I also went to the movies a lot more, which was, IMO, a good (though expensive) thing as well. And for a few years when I was a kid we basically went without TV (well, we had one crappy station, but that was it), and almost all my memories of that period are of playing with other kids outside and having a blast, so…
But I’ll warn you that if you’re anything like me, once you bring the TV back after the month off, no matter how much you enjoyed being away from it, it’s very very easy to go back to your old viewing habits. It’s amazing the ability the thing has to suck viewers in (especially if you have cable). Any time I’ve come back to having a TV after an extended period away from it, I did pretty well without it for a while, but after a week or two it was back to the same old channel surfing.
I pretty much did it through most of college - I didn’t have one in my room, so if I wanted to watch, I had to go to the common room. But I was usually in the minority with my viewing choices and frequently outvoted. So I didn’t watch.
My family didn’t have a TV till I was seven years old. I learned to read, and read a lot.
Now I have a TV, and still read a lot. Does that help?
I think instilling critical viewing is a far better way to go about it that barring TV completely. Honestly, I think the days when there were only three or four channels and the entire family gathered around and watched it were better, for family purposes. I (with seven siblings and my folks) could never get into a slackjawed mode as there was always someone saying, “This is stupid.” Discussion ensued.
I only follow 3 shows…the rest of the time when I watch TV is when I am trying to fall asleep or relax in bed when I am tired. Concentrating on the TV helps me fall asleep faster (I sometimes have trouble falling asleep). Unless I have aboslutely nothing else to do, I don’t just sit down and watch it.
I learned to read early and spent several years with an aunt and uncle who only allowed me to watch “The Wonderful World of Disney”. In high school I went to a private school in the North Georgia mountains (before cable) where we weren’t allowed TVs in our rooms. There was one in each common room but without cable there wasn’t much to see.
I never got in the habit of watching TV, and I do think it is a habit. Mr. SCL does watch - Sci-Fi Channel, History Channel, etc., and I don’t mind - I just haven’t seen anything that makes me want to keep watching.
For your child - maybe a half-hour of reading or art or active play for each half hour of TV? If she has to earn it it may not be as valuable, or she may discover reading is more fun. IMy mother told me that when I was a toddler, I would leave the room to play during the show and come back in for the commercials. Budding consumer!)
Does it count if you only watch DVDs of television shows?
Everything worth watching comes on DVD now! Besides maybe the news, name one thing worth watching that doesn’t, and I’ll shoot it down. And the news can be read, which is far superior to watching the nightly compressed version.
Talk shows, soap operas, daytime television, late night television- all crap to me. DVD is all that matters.
Except maybe music videos, which I can download from the net if I so please.
I went without one for about a year after separating from my wife. I don’t watch many TV shows (at the moment House, Numb3rs, Mythbusters and The Simpsons. Also Arrested Development and Scrubs on the rare occassions they are on.) I do love TV sport though. I deeply regretted missing Australia’s series with India where India staged on of the great comebacks in cricket history but other than that didn’t care much at all. I listened to the radio a lot at night (ABC radio in Australia is very good and informative - far more than television).
Eventually I rented a TV the day after 9/11. It happened in the middle of the night here. I was talking to a friend with the radio on and thought the coverage was a retrospective on the original WTC bombing. When I discovered it wasn’t I walked up to the pub up the road and watched the overnight coverage with the barman - the place was otherwise deserted. I got up in the morning, went to the rental shop and took home a TV that wasn’t off for the next 4 days.
For me, I never really looked back. I still have my television and cable, but it really is just a waste of money. The one thing I found after being away so long is that there really is nothing worth watching and it seems like there are more commercials than anything else.
Deadwood, The Sopranos, and Family Guy are the only shows I like to watch and I just wait til there released on DVD because I like to watch them all in one sitting anyway.
There’s just so many other things I could be doing, like playing guitar, taking the Softail Night Train out for a ride, reading, writing, Doping, sleeping, rubbing one out…
I was in a used bookstore one day when a man came in with his daughter who was about eight or nine. The child was bubbling over as she looked through the children’s section. Since I was an English teacher, I commented to the father about how pleasing it was to see a child so enthusiastic about reading. He smiled proudly. “We don’t have a television,” he explained.
I now have had a TV for 2-3 years. But I didn’t have one for most of my life. One of the most striking thing IMO is the different perspective you get about news and world events when you never watch TV news. I remember having been completely baffled when, right before the beginning of the first Gulf war, I happened to see the midday news on the TVs of a department store. Of course, I knew it was an important event, but the news were mostly only footages of tanks, missiles being launched, etc… It had absolutely nothing to do with the perspective I had gotten from reading the papers. It was like being suddenly sent to some alternative universe.
Apart from that, I wouldn’t generally advise against owning a TV. I didn’t have one not on the basis of some metaphysical belief, but just because I didn’t feel the need to have one. I got one when someone gave it to me. And though I can still spend weeks in a row without watching it (but at other times, I can watch it every day), there’s still quite a lot of interesting or entertaining stuff broadcasted (even though the most part isn’t worth watching).
I don’t have kids, who are, I assume, the main issue for you. But if I had, I would definitely get/keep a TV. I think kids should be allowed to be have at least some access to the “culture” shared by essentially all their friends, and more importantly that TV isn’t “evil” and is quite often an entertainment as acceptable as many others. Sometimes even “educational”, but anyway I don’t think that everything in a kid’s life should be educational. Like for anything else, moderation is key (this coming from someone who isn’t a parent and spend way too much time in front of a computer screen, so do whatever you want with my opinion).
As for my experience of life without TV : really no big deal. If you think you’re wasting too much time watching it, don’t necessarily expect miracles. If you’re like me, you’ll find in quick order equally pointless ways to waste your time (even without a computer). And anyway, once again, watching TV is necessarily wasting one’s time. There are plenty of good movies, documentaries, etc…broadcasted. Though I can’t deny that being TV-less can significantly increase the time spent actually talking with your family (parents/brothers/SOs in my case, but I assume also children).
I stopped watching TV about 2 years ago. I dunno why, I just… stopped. These days when I try to watch it I can’t because everything is so BORING. I’m pretty sure your kids will get used to it. If at the end of the month you decide you like life without TV, don’t be afraid to sell the damn thing
Maybe so. I actually was wondering about this while writing my previous post. I too was raised as a child without a TV (by my grandmother in the countryside who never have had one), then went to a boarding school were we were allowed to watch TV once a week, and together (and other kids always voted to watch a some soccer game). I had one when living with my parents as a teenager but by this time everything on TV bored me to death, and I preferred by far role-playing games or solving the world’s problems while smoking pot with my friends. And I indeed ended up as an adult who doesn’t care much about TV.
So, maybe you’re right, and it’s mostly a habbit. In which case, I would withdraw my previous statement and say that kid’s exposure to TV should be limited, because, despite it not being the worst thing ever, I can’t see being addicted to it as a good thing.
You know, I thought of something I hate about TV. You used to be able to watch a show with no visual interruptions on the screen - just the picture. Then, it became the fashion to fade in a superimposition of the network or station logo in the bottom right corner now and then. Soon, the logo in the corner became permanent. Then it got bigger. Then it was solid, not opaque. Then it was color. Now it’s evolved into animated and live-action popups every minute or so, with ads for other programs, the weather, or other information. On either side of the screen. Or both. I find that very distracting and annoying.
I used to tape quite a lot of stuff off the TV for posterity in the period when I did watch it for some of the ‘90s. I don’t anymore, because the extra information on the screen ruins it for me. They can’t cram in enough ads in the usual space, now they have to ugly up the screen with them during the program you’re trying to watch! A revoltin’ development.
