What I really don’t get are the people who let kids, really young kids, watch tons of TV. A friend of mine used to plop her infant in front of CNN all the time. Seems dangerous to me! Any chance there’s a link between TV & ADHD?
We went three years without TV. When we got cable internet, we decided to get TV back. We forget it’s there, sometimes.
Baseball is the ultimate background noise. During baseball season, if there’s a game on TV, I’ll usually have the TV on. Sometimes I’m watching (mostly the Indians), but other times I’m reading or working.
During college, I took a six week course that took the place of three years of Classical Greek. I spent the summer doing Greek lessons while watching “Mission: Impossible” on FX. Now, that’s living.
(Chalk me up as another who couldn’t keep reading Martin’s A Clash of Kings. Great story and storytelling. So grim that I just wanted to cry.)
Julie
We don’t watch much TV. BabyTee (now 20 months old) doesn’t watch it either (well, sometimes he likes to watch a few minutes of Animal Planet). We might see 1/2 hour to an hour a day, on days we watch. I can go for days without turning the set on at all.
We were at my aunt’s house a couple of weekends ago, and their TV was on constantly. My aunt’s a TV-aholic (she was watching decades-old episodes of Ryan’s Hope on some soap channel). The really weird thing though was that 2 TVs were on in their house in different rooms on the same floor, but no one was watching the one in the guest room. My husband asked my cousin if he should turn it off and she said no. No one was in there–the TV was playing to an empty room all day. Very weird.
I found I rather like silence. My husband prefers music and NPR to silence so he’s almost always listening to the radio. Sometimes I find even that’s too much background noise for me.
My ex was one of those who needed the constant noise. It was TV or the radio, loud, all day long, and at night if he got up to freakin pee for two minutes he’d take a GameBoy to the bathroom! He just needed input ALL THE TIME. One of many reasons he’s the ex.
I’m glad there are others out there who realize TV is Evil! I can’t stand to see my children watching it, so I keep them from it most of the time. Of course, at Grandma’s house, it’s a different story.
My mom is a total TV-aholic. I, OTOH, am one of those people who simply <i>cannot</i> focus on anything else if it is on. I only see my parents 3 or 4 times a year, and they are generally very doting parents, very invested in me and my life. But since I moved out a few years back, the TV has become Mom’s new child.
Mr. Monkeytoes and I went to their place last Xmas, for 4 days. The TV was on ALL THE TIME. At every meal, the damned thing was yammering in the background, but I tried to put up with it. Christmas dinner was the last straw, though. That damned appliance was literally SCREAMING at us from 25 feet away. I asked my mom nicely if we could turn it down. She lost it! Got into a total huff. I was mystified, but now I understand: the TV really is a family member to her, and I was being impolite to it. GAH!