Get A Life: Turn Off Your Television
Tom Cowin
An estimated five million people took part in TV Turn-Off Week organised recently by the International Turn Off TV campaign in the US and the International Campaign Against Television, White Dot. The campaign is supported by groups such as the American Federation of Teachers, the American Medical Association and the Association of Library Services to Children.
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The campaign appears to be growing with schools, libraries and community groups organising tie-in events such as drama nights, story readings, activity fairs and talent shows. The emphasis is on demonstrating the improvement in the quality of life that turning off the TV brings. Watching television is essentially a passive pastime and the campaign attempts to show that involvement in the local community is more enjoyable and beneficial than staring at the TV.
Research shows that the average primary school age child in Britain watches four hours of television a day, which are four hours that could be spent actively learning or taking part in activities that are more sociable and fun. A study published in the American Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent medicine appears to show that children who watch a lot of television spend less time socialising and so develop fewer social skills than those who watch less. The study showed that minimising the amount of time in front of the TV and promoting other activities lead to marked decrease in incidences of playground aggression. Another study, by the American Academy of Pediatrics, has shown an apparent link between watching television and attention deficit disorder. The pace of the images and unfolding storylines on TV is greatly sped up compared to a child's experiences of normal life, this may cause over-stimulation in a child's brain. According to the Journal of Pediatrics, the constant noise of the TV is thought to “interfere with the development of ‘inner speech’ by which a child learns to think through problems and plans and restrain impulsive responses.” In 1998 the academy advised that children under two should watch no TV at all.
Another focus of the campaign is on the damaging effect of TV on involvement in the democratic process. An American study has shown a marked decrease in numbers of people turning out for community groups and activities since the 1950’s. It was found that the only reason for this was the rapid increase in the amount of television being watched. Television is not a democratic medium, it turns people into passive consumers rather than active community members, when a quarter of an average adults life is spent in front of the TV it leaves little room for anything else. The pattern across Europe and America is that control of the medium is being monopolised by a increasingly small number of corporations and individuals. The growth of alternative, community based news websites such as indymedia and the huge surge in sign ups to the Al-Jazeera web service during the Iraq conflict can be seen as a growing frustration with what people are being offered by conventional media.
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Another study, published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behaviour, has shown that women today have less sex than women in the 1950s. It associates this decline in sexual activity, in part, with watching TV! We have to ask ourselves if watching TV is really better than sex.
The organisers of White Dot cut through conventional arguments and concerns that focus on the content of broadcast media and go to the heart of the matter - should we be watching TV at all? It is the physical and mental inactivity that TV engenders that concerns them. The message of the campaign is that turning the TV off and taking part in other activities improves life for the individual and wider community.
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