Stop watching TV, do something worthwhile

The average American watches three to four hours of television each day.

This finding from a recent survey by the A.C. Neilsen Company (the same one that does the "Nielsen Ratings") begs the question, "Did life exist before TV?" Wait, let me rephrase that. Does life exist with TV?

Indeed, if the time that Americans spent watching TV was piled into one lump sum, in one year we could all watch TV for forty-five straight days without sleeping. If we live for 70 years, we could watch TV for eight straight years.

Television is the third most common patterned human activity next to work and sleep.

Our living rooms are set up so that everyone can get the best possible view of the television. If someone from another planet walked into our homes, they might assume that the TV set was an object of worship. I won't deny that it is in the lives of many Americans.

I ran across a published experiment by an assistant prof and a masters student from Cal-State Northridge on the Internet the other day. Interesting stuff.

These people, David Boyns and Desiree Stephenson, asked 150 entry-level sociology students to go home and watch TV for 30 minutes-with the TV off. The students were instructed to pay attention to the TV as if they were watching something, not talk on the phone or do homework or whatever. After the half-hour, the students documented their thoughts and feelings about the experiment.

At first, the subjects were a bit annoyed and embarrased. Said one, "I felt strange and hoped no one in my family would come home while I was doing this experiment." After a few minutes, the students began to realize just how long 30 minutes is. It seems that "TV time" is quite different from our usual sensation of time. This is probably why we are able to rot in front of it for hours on end without realizing it.

Next, they realized just how zoned in they are when they usually watch TV. Many reported that their senses were more alert with the TV off.

One subject noted, "While sitting in the break room in the back of our work building, surrounded by quietness, I could distinguish and recognize sounds and smells that I had never noticed in my months of working there." Another said, "I could hear everything else going on. I think that my favorite thing about television is not the shows on it but the noise-'space' it fills."

As time went on in the experiment, many subjects felt a strong desire to turn on the TV, and many did. One student remarked, "I literally felt that I would lose my mind if I didn't turn it back on." Toward the end of the half-hour, the subjects felt like the TV was watching them, a la "Big Brother" in George Orwell's classic novel "1984." One imagined the TV was begging to be turned on while another felt like the TV was dying because he or she would not turn it on.

Finally, the participants replayed TV programs in their heads as they stared at the blank screen. Said one, "I could already hear the laugh tracks of some played-out sitcom ringing in my ears, following cliched punch-lines from jokes older than myself." These remarks give me the mental image of the old lady in "Requiem for a Dream" that was haunted by her TV show.

Keep in mind that all of these were experienced after only one half-hour of sitting in front of the blank television.

Granted, this experiment was short on empirical data and relied on self-observation from the subjects, but I think it reflects what many of us already know and almost all of us choose to deny: TV is rotting our brains.

One of the most striking things about this experiment is the sense of loneliness it brought out in the subjects. We perceive TV as always being there for us. It allows us to forget about all the anxieties we have in our lives and in the meantime we swallow a whopping dose of propaganda and consumerism that give us a fake sense of purpose and meaning.

What would we do without TV? We would have to meet real people, or read books, or get some exercise. We would have to find a genuine purpose and be self-reliant. In short, we would be forced to live our lives.

So go outside and play a round of frisbee-golf with your neighbor, or shuck some corn and have a picnic. But whatever you do, turn off your TV and stop being "the man's" mind-bitch.