[EllieJay]

I just joined this discussion and am very interested in the conversation. Also, aquagirl3 asked me to comment since I wrote a book about the subject, "The Big Turnoff." It seems that Bust readers/parents appear to be pretty savvy--not like the average parent who has the television on all day long. Even so, I'm curious if anyone has challenges dealing with relatives, child care providers and others who like using the electronic babysitter with your children. I would be very interested in learning about how parents deal with those situations. Do you just go with the flow or ask others to turn it off?

Also, I really like the groups that missladyj mentioned and I want to add that TV Turnoff Week is part of The Center for Screen Time Awareness:
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari...-8&oe=UTF-8

[missladyj]

There is a great study by the Kaiser Family Foundation called Generation M about media in the lives of 8-18 yr olds. One of the findings is that kids who spend less time watching tv, read more which can lead to better school performance. Also that parental mointoring is important .


here is a link to some great resources from them

http://www.kff.org/entmedia/index.cfm


another good organization is commercial alert. Ralph Nader was one of the founders.

http://www.commercialalert.org/


also there is a national event called TV turn off week that happens in april.

[aquagirl3]

It seems like everyone in here restricts TV! Do you guys know people whose kids watch tons and tons? I read that the average American kid watches like 35 hours a week, or something ridiculous, and I don't know who these people are. (I can see myself doing that, but not letting my kid(s) do it!)

[shinyx3]

my family did not have a tv till i was 13. then it was pretty much for movies. i liked that so i have not had a tv for quite a while in my home but we do watch movies on the computer. i never really feel like we are missing anything. as a child i did sometimes feel left out when my friends would talk about tv shows but i don't really remember being too bummed about it. when other people came to my home as a child we never had a hard time finding something to do. even when i did have a tv in the house (it was my ex's) i still was very restrictive with what i allowed my kid to watch. he doesn't seem to miss the tv now that we do not have one. i actually did buy him a gameboy a while back and he has lost it. (because he forgot about it and hardly ever played it) so yes. essentially i think life with out tv can be richer. where are so many ways we can entertain ourselves with out tv. on that note i think i use the computer far too many hour a day and basicly use it like others use tv. bad me.

[pepper]

we had barely any tv growing up but i had a serious addiction during my teens and it took more than half my life to be able to be around a television and not zone right in and zone right out. these days i can have a tv on in the background for noise while i do housework and never even look at it once. i find the radio distracting, i think it's designed to get your attention with noise whereas the tv is designed to be looked at and is easy to ignore if you can only hear it.
little has watched cartoons and videos and played on the computer but i limit it. if i have a working television and let him watch it he'll ask for it every day, all day long so i don't keep one in the house. there's a screen for video games and movies but it doesn't get channels. even so, screen time is very restricted, there are so many other things going in there's barely time for it anyhow.

[humanist77]

I'm fascinated by the effects of TV watching on both children and adults. I guess I grew up watching a lot of TV, but at some point in my teens, I began analyzing the obvious and not so obvious messages and influences in commercials and tv shows, which led me to basically avoiding the TV completely for a long time. I couldn't watch anything without seeing between the lines and often being very bothered by it.

A couple years ago I read a fantastic book called "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television" by Jerry Mander, which pretty much confirmed and cemented my feelings about the effects of TV watching.

I'm also really interested in the connection between ADD and other behavior/attention disorders and TV watching in children. I was never diagnosed as a child, but I was very spacey and uninterested in school, causing a lot of problems. I don't doubt that it at least in part had something to do with the amount of television I watched everyday. I have to wonder how it would've been different had my parents been more restrictive. I'm glad that I have now come to my senses, but I definitely wasted a lot of time and energy sitting in front of the TV..

[grenadine]

mouse, i had a similar "media hole" experience, but i don't regret it or think it was a big deal. what i discovered in my twenties was that it was easy to catch up on the media deficit i had just from conversations with my peers and a couple of hours of tube-watching. i wasn't, however, totally tv-restricted as a kid, but we didn't have cable and i was a big reader so i didn't have the relationship with shows that many of my peers had.

we don't watch tv with our two-year-old habitually; he has very occasionally seen some pbs shows (sesame street three times, curious george once) and shows minimal interest/loses interest quickly, and the only video he likes is "the red balloon," which i think he mostly likes because there's no talking and we sit with him and talk ABOUT it when he watches it. i'm comfortable with that. i confess that i do occasionally watch tv (specifically i sometimes watch one particular show about slutty, emotionally stunted doctors), and i think it's total trash and junk food for the mind. which i think is more appropriate for older children/adults than for young children. however, i think i'm lucky in that neither i nor my son has tv-junkie tendencies -- for example, when said slutty doctor show was in reruns all summer, i never watched it or any other tv, and that was just fine, and he shows no interest in regular tv-watching (possibly because literally the ONLY time the tv -- which is very small and has to be dragged out of a cupboard-- is on is from 9-10 on thursday nights, when he's in bed). i don't know what i'd do if/when he demanded TV. i suspect i'd throw the tv out the window. it's not that i think it's evil, it's just non-nutritive. i particularly HATE tv news and dinnertime tv-watching, as i think they destroy critical thinking skills in the case of the first (sensationalistic stupidity, anyone?) and social skills/family bonds in the case of the second.

ETA: oh, and my dear friend's young son is a video game ADDICT and constantly talks about video games, which he always wants to play with me because i have some aptitude for/experience with tekken. i think it's REPULSIVE. video games are for arcades. movies are for theatres. 'nuff said.

[erinjane]

Tv was never restricted for me growing up, but I don't remember watching a lot of it. I was fortunate to live on a street where I was surrounded by at least 7 kids my age so all my memories of my childhood are outside playing soccer or baseball or hide and go seek, or building snow forts and jumping in leaves. I definitely remember watching some, but I always felt like my parents gave me and my brothers lots of alternatives to TV and encouraged us not to watch, even though it was never formally restricted.

When I think about raising kids in the future, TV is something I would like to restrict in their early life just because it seems to rampant now. My niece is 4 and I wish she wasn't so into TV and video games. But at the same time I understand how hard it is to restrict her. My brother is a single father and doesn't always have the time to sit down with her and play. Even when I babysit her sometimes I'll need to get things done and it's just easier to put her in front of the box. It's really difficult to find that balance.

[aquagirl3]

TV was fairly restricted for me too, and yet once I could make my own decisions I definitely became somewhat of an addict. Now that Tivo is ubiquitous, I can't decide if it's good or bad--I haven't watched a commercial in several years, but on the other hand, I can watch a favorite show any time of the day I want because they are all stored. Whereas before, I never would have bothered turning on the TV at 2 in the afternoon.

[mouse]

i was raised without tv or video games--i was allowed to watch sesame street and mister rogers (and sometimes pee wee, because my parents wanted to too!) every couple of months as a Special Treat. movies were few and far between, and monitored pretty strictly. my parents still keep their tv unplugged behind a chair and have to lug it out, plug it in, and let it autoprogram before they watch anything (which as a result is done very rarely). i also went to a school that discouraged tv as well.

for the most part i think it's a great idea, but i think it can be taken to extremes. on the one hand, i had a really awesome, imaginative, outdoor childhood, but on the other, i did miss out on quite a lot and more often than not have to admit ignorance due to my "media hole", as i like to call it, on most subjects of 80's and 90's pop culture that is second nature to most people, which i kind of feel a little regretful about. not that i really want to know every single hall and oates song or remember what happened in that episode of gummi bears...but it's annoying to have people keep going "OH MY GOD, you don't KNOW WHAT THAT IS? oh my god you've never SEEN THAT? YOU'RE KIDDING!!!1!!1"

however, with little kids, i do think it's important to make sure that tv isn't their only stimuli, and that they are encouraged to come up with their own ideas for play and not turn to tv as a solution to boredom. people say that tv stimulates imagination, and i think that in a very small sense that can be true, but i also think that after a certain point (a point that's reached pretty soon) that is absolute bullshit. it's one thing to be shown a story, but it's another to come up with one on your own.

[aquagirl3]

Hello,
I recently read a great book called "The Big Turnoff: Confessions of a TV-addicted Mom trying to raise a TV-free kid" by Ellen Currey-Wilson. It got me really interested in the idea of raising my son, who is only just newborn, without TV (at least for the first few years). "TV" means movies, TV, or video games. What I enjoyed about it was that the author herself was a complete addict who grew up watching a ton, and she references shows constantly while also talking about how bad TV is in many ways, so it was very relatable to me and I'm sure would be to others who have a love-hate relationship with TV.

I went on to read "The Plug-in Drug" which was much more academic but also REALLY interesting in terms of how a lot of people think that educational shows like Sesame Street and the Discovery Channel are fine for kids, but research shows that doing pretty much ANYTHING in "real life", even just kind of fiddling around the house, is better for toddlers' intellectual and social development. It made a good point that even though we think it's great for kids to watch African safaris and the like on TV, very few kids know anything about the nature in their own backyard or neighborhood.

I would love to hear other parents' views on this topic. Do you restrict TV? If you do do you still watch it yourselves? Have you tried doing a "TV-Turnoff Week" which they have in April and promote in some areas?

I emailed the author of The Big Turnoff and was able to meet her for lunch when I traveled to her city, Portland, recently. If anyone lives there she is very interested in getting parents together to network, but she also hopes to see the movement spread to other cities. Her son, Casey, is 12 now. She didn't allow any TV until he was 6, and then 2 hours a week, and he turned out to not really be interested in watching it much once he was allowed. She thinks this is because she always tried to distract him and offer alternatives instead of just forbidding it as an exciting and mysterious pastime.

I will be letting Ellen know about this thread because I am hoping she will come on and join the discussion if we get some responses to this. I really recommend her book, too, to anyone who is interested! (I promise I'm not a relative! )