Chapter 36

How Can I Control My TV Viewing Habits?

FOR many, young and old, TV watching amounts to a serious addiction. Surveys indicate that by age 18 the average American youth will have watched some 15,000 hours of TV! And that a bona fide addiction is involved becomes obvious when hard-core viewers try to kick the habit.

“I find television almost irresistible. When the set is on, I cannot ignore it. I can’t turn it off. . . . As I reach out to turn off the set, the strength goes out of my arms. So I sit there for hours and hours.” An immature youth? No, this was a college English instructor! But youths too can be TV junkies. Note the reactions of some who agreed to a “No TV Week”:

“I’ve been having a state of depression . . . I’m going out of my mind.”​—Twelve-year-old Susan.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to kick the habit. I love TV too much.”​—Thirteen-year-old Linda.

“The pressure was on terribly. I kept on having the urge. The hardest time was nighttime between eight and ten o’clock.”​—Eleven-year-old Louis.

It is no surprise, then, that most of the youths involved celebrated the end of “No TV Week” with a mad dash for the TV set. But far from being something to laugh at, TV addiction brings with it a host of potential problems. Consider just a few of them:

Slipping grades: The National Institute of Mental Health (U.S.) reported that excessive TV viewing can lead to “lower school achievement, especially in reading.” The book The Literacy Hoax further charges: “Television’s effect on children is to create an expectation that learning should be easy, passive, and entertaining.” The TV addict may thus find studying an ordeal.

Poor reading habits: When was the last time you picked up a book and read it from cover to cover? A spokesman for the West German Association of Book Dealers lamented: “We have become a nation of people who go home after work and fall asleep in front of the television. We are reading less and less.” A report from Australia similarly said: “For every hour spent reading, the average Australian child will have seen seven hours of television.”

Diminished family life: Wrote one Christian woman: “Because of excessive TV viewing . . . I was very lonely and felt isolated. It was as if [my] family were all strangers.” Do you likewise find yourself spending less time with your family because of TV?

Laziness: Some feel that the very passiveness of TV “may lead to [a youth’s] expectation that [his] needs will be met without effort and to a passive approach to life.”

Exposure to unwholesome influences: Some cable television networks bring pornography into the home. And regular programming often provides a steady diet of car crashes, explosions, stabbings, shootings, and karate kicks. According to one estimate, a young person in the United States will witness the killing of 18,000 people on TV by the time he is 14 years old, not to mention fistfights and vandalism.

British researcher William Belson found that boys who thrived on violent TV shows were more likely to “engage in violence of a serious kind.” He also claimed that TV violence could incite “swearing and the use of bad language, aggressiveness in sport or play, threatening to use violence on another boy, writing slogans on walls, [and] breaking windows.” While you may think yourself immune to such influences, Belson’s study found that exposure to TV violence did not “change [the] boys’ conscious attitudes toward” violence. The steady diet of violence apparently chipped away at their subconscious inhibitions against violence.

Of even more concern, though, is the effect addiction to TV violence can have upon one’s relationship with the God who ‘hates anyone loving violence.’​—Psalm 11:5.

[Box on page 292, 293]

‘I Was a TV Addict’​—An Interview

Interviewer: How old were you when you got hooked on TV?

Wyant: About ten years old. As soon as I came home from school, I’d turn on the TV. First, I’d watch the cartoons and kiddie programs. Then the news would come on, . . . and I’d go into the kitchen and look for something to eat. After that, I’d go back to the TV and watch till I wanted to go to sleep.

Interviewer: But when did you have time for your friends?

Wyant: The TV was my friend.

Interviewer: Then you never had time for play or sports?

Wyant: [laughing] I have no athletic abilities. Because I watched TV all the time, I never developed them. I’m a terrible basketball player. And in gym class I was always the last one to get chosen. I wish, though, I had developed my athletic abilities a bit more​—not so that I could have gone around boasting, but just so I could have at least enjoyed myself.

Interviewer: What about your grades?

Wyant: I managed in grammar school. I’d stay up late and do my homework at the last minute. But it was harder in high school because I had developed such poor study habits.

Interviewer: Has watching all that TV affected you?

Wyant: Yes. Sometimes when I’m around people, I find myself just watching them​—as if I were watching a TV talk show—​instead of participating in the conversation. I wish I could relate better to people.

Interviewer: Well, you’ve done just fine in this conversation. Obviously you’ve overcome your addiction.

Wyant: I started breaking away from TV after I entered high school. . . . I sought out the association of Witness youths and started to make spiritual progress.

Interviewer: But what did this have to do with your TV viewing?

Wyant: As my appreciation for spiritual things grew, I realized that many of the shows I used to watch really weren’t for Christians. Too, I felt the need to do more study of the Bible and to prepare for Christian meetings. That meant cutting out most of the TV viewing. It wasn’t easy, though. I used to love those Saturday-morning cartoons. But then a Christian brother in the congregation invited me to go with him in the door-to-door preaching work on Saturday morning. That broke my Saturday morning TV habit. So eventually I learned really to tone down my TV watching.

Interviewer: What about today?

Wyant: Well, I still have the problem that if the TV is on, I cannot get anything done. So I leave it off most of the time. In fact, my TV broke down a few months ago and I haven’t bothered to get it fixed.