Life without TV: filling those four hours with more satisfying leisure

Parks & Recreation, Nov, 2002 by Barbara Brock

A new survey reveals that hundreds of Americans are surviving and thriving without television, and that their reasons for turning off television are simple, manageable and compelling. By turning off television and taking back their time, they gained more communication with children and spouses, improved marriages, experienced less conflict among siblings and increased community involvement. They also became more active. Although more than 4,000 studies have been conducted on the effects of television, the study I conducted that I'll discuss in this article was the first to examine the lifestyles of hundreds of TV-free families.

On average, Americans watch TV more than four hours a day. According to researchers John Robinson and Geoff Godbey, that fact means that Americans spend 40 percent of their leisure time sitting and watching instead of doing something for themselves, their families or their communities. Whether in living rooms, waiting rooms, fitness centers, bars, children's bedrooms, day care centers, hospitals or on the ceiling of dentist offices or airplanes, television is widely accepted on a daily basis. Favorite newscasters begin the day, children come home from school to a host of character "friends," families eat dinner with their chosen stars and evening television entertainment in separate rooms is more common than not. More than half of all children over the age of eight have a TV in their room. Late at night, one-quarter of the population drifts off to sleep accompanied by late night talk shows at least three nights a week.

More than half of all Americans claim that television is their primary form of entertainment. It's no surprise, then, that neighbors are more often strangers than friends and, compared to the past, fewer petitions are signed, fewer organizations are joined, fewer social gatherings are organized and even socializing in families occurs less often. Harvard professor and social capital researcher Robert Putnam claims, "Americans watch `Friends'; they don't have any."

Aside from occupational duties and sleep, television is the nation's most time-consuming activity. Similar to adult viewers, children spend more time watching television than they spend in any other activity except sleeping. School children spend 900 hours per year in school and 1,154 hours per year watching television. This high volume of television watching represents the major source of information and entertainment for Americans where information is gleaned, both accurate and inaccurate, about how people act, behave, look and feel.

Time spent watching television also affects Americans because it represents time not spent in other activities, such as social interaction, community involvement, sports and reading.

Effects of TV Time

Numerous studies demonstrate that, without a doubt, frequent television viewing contributes to a number of issues, including fractured family time, poor reading and academic performance, increased violence, sedentary lifestyles and obesity.

Family Cohesion: With television turned on in the average American household for seven hours and 40 minutes per day, and 40 percent of Americans saying they watch TV "always or often" during dinner, it's no surprise that many families don't talk anymore.

Academic Achievement: Studies involving more than 400,000 students find that television is bad for academic achievement. Ten years ago, children who watched more than 10 hours of television per week fared worse academically than those who watched less, yet American children continue to watch more than twice that amount. In 2000, the National Assessment of Educational Progress again found that the students who watch the most TV suffered academically.

TV and Violence: Not surprisingly, the relationship of television to escalating violence is also reported. One study, tracking more than 700 adolescents into adulthood over 17 years, reported that adolescents who watched more than one hour of television a day are four times more likely to commit aggressive and violent acts as adults than those who watched less than one hour a day. An average American child will witness more than 200,000 violent acts and 16,000 murders by the time she's 18. Eight out of ten Hollywood executives believe there's a link between TV violence and real-life violence, 73 percent of Americans believe that TV and movies are responsible for juvenile crime and 91 percent of children say they feel upset or scared by violence on television. Yet producers don't react to public opinion by cutting back on violence. Even though there was a 20 percent reduction in American homicides between 1995 and 1996, there was a seven-fold increase of network news coverage of homicide between 1993 and 1996.

Physical Activity: Finally, most Americans don't get enough physical exercise. Inactivity results when more than half of Americans claim television is their primary form of entertainment. According to Dr. William Dietz, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "The easiest way to reduce inactivity is to turn off the TV set. Almost anything uses more energy than watching TV."