I've written a bit over the past week on productivity, personal success, becoming a life long learner, and even about using art and design practices.
This is a topic whose subject is a tension for me--it's something I'm both drawn to and repelled by, and it is so pervasive that to attempt to remove it from one's life is like going without food or shopping: that subject is TV. It's in almost every home, it's on almost ever hour, and it consumes almost everyone's attention.
And this is precisely the reason why it should be, at least for a time, removed from your life.
Now I know this is highly contentious and may even sound sanctimonious, but if you want to live a life of productivity and ideas and learning and art and creativity, then you should read on.
Here are a few reasons why you should seek to watch less and less TV:
1. Wastes time: TV is like 21st Century opium. Indeed Marx famously claimed that religion is the opium of the people, but that was before TV. How much time can you spend just sitting there watching show after show drift by for hours and days on end. It's so relaxing in your comfy pants and couch, slucking your favourite bevy and munching on every kind of carbohydrate imaginable... So many things you could be doing--if you could just turn it off. Not so easy.
2. Shuts down conversation: I like to think I can watch TV and have conversation at the same time, but it's hard to truly listen to someone when my eyes are drawn to all those vibrant megapixels and silky voices. Even when the actors or anchors are saying nothing at all, it's for some reason more captivating than the person next to me...
3. No voice: When you watch TV, you have no voice, for even when you're watching something funny, it laughs for you. You are unnecessary. When you watch an event take place across the world--all 24 hours of footage--you can't do anything about it. When you watch commenters give a point of view contrary to yours, you cannot address them, except at the screen.
4. Bio-scrambling: There's more data coming out showing the disastrous effects of TV on children's brains particularly. There was a network in Japan that ran a show whose scenes shifted every 1.5 seconds. When it realized the viewer ratings correlated to the speed of scene-changes, they shifted it to every second--reports came in of children going in literal seizures. Their brains are so malleable; the neural pathways are just forming, and TV can scramble them up. Best to keep them away from the screen and have them play.
5. Those who are on TV don't have them: There are countless actors and producers and entrepreneurs who may be on the TV screen but don't own one. How does this make sense? Wouldn't they be the first to sing their praises? Nope. It's probably because while you're sitting there watching them, they're out getting more work or auditioning for another part, or researching another role. What about the internet or computers or iPads and iPhones? Well, George Lucas claims he has been hiding from the internet since 2000, and Steve Jobs wouldn't let his kids use iPads. Makes you kinda think, doesn't it?
6. So many better things to do: Think of all the amazing books sitting around your house you haven't read, or those glutting the shelves of your public library. Think of your family with whom you can hang out or go on an outing or read to, draw with, talk to.
7. Stress: How much good is on TV? Conflict sells. So much of what is being broadcasted on TV is conflict-ridden; it shows more bad news than good; it reveals the worst of human beings rather than their best; it pits people against each other; it raises the hairs on backs with doomsday predictions; it shows suffering and exploitation and oppression and hatred. What does that do to your mind? How does that bring peace and joy to your life? I'm not saying there's nothing good on TV--no. What I'm saying is the majority of it is conflictive in nature primarily because it's interesting and thus keeps people's attention.
8. Malleability: Humans are highly suggestive. It's probably in our genetic make-up to learn from others and adapt to behaviour that will get us farther ahead in life--but there's an underbelly to that: we can model even those behaviours we find, under normal circumstances, deplorable. There was a study I read once that showed people talking and acting like their favourite Friends characters up to several hours after watching an episode. How much of your thinking is manufactured in such a way? How much of your opinions are shaped by what you are watching? How much of what comes from your mouth is a repeat of cliches and slangs and faulty logic you've watched on television? Think about it.
9. Change your habits: When you're watching TV you're zoned out; you're often so drawn into the show that you're hardly thinking. One of the great scholars in the field of creativity, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, claims that you're using the same level of creativity while watching TV as you would while using the bathroom--no joke! Instead of watching TV, begin changing your habits: incorporate a book per week and learn the art of reading; spend more quality time with your family; begin to incorporate the habits of successful people and the ways to think like a designer; make goals lists and try to accomplish all of them. You'll be a different person when you turn off, and tune in, and return to, life.
10. TVs are getting 'smarter': TVs are becoming smart TVs, which means they are equipped with surveillance technology that records what you watch and even video records you while you're watching it. And where does that data go? The manufacturer. And what does the manufacturer do with that data? Whatever makes it more money. With smart TVs, there is no such thing as privacy.
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