The average American spends about 4 hours a day watching
TV. When you add to that a 8-9 hour work day, 6-7 hours of sleep, a
hour to get ready in the morning, and a hour to commute home and prepare dinner,
it's clear that most Americans have pretty full days. Perhaps that's why
more than 20 percent of Americans don't know that the Earth goes around the Sun,
more than 40 percent of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was behind
the 9/11 attacks, only 11 percent can name John Roberts as the Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court, and more than 40 percent don't know that Judaism is an older
religion than Christianity and Islam.
Of course, TV itself does
impart some information - rumors regarding celebrity sex scandals, the latest
updates on reality TV contests, and which doctors are sleeping with which other
doctors on popular medical dramas. It also has so called "news channels"
where talking heads mix new and opinion and good car chases are the events of
the week. That said, it's worth noting that even the most factual TV
programs present information at a much slower pace than a book or
newspaper. But then TV isn't intended to be educational, it's
intended to be entertaining.
It's easy to knock TV. It doesn't
impart much valuable information, and, in fact, the talking heads frequently
impart misinformation. Furthermore it consumes an enormous amount of time
- time that could be spent learning, or doing. People come home from work,
sit down in front of the TV, and let it live for them.
It's remarkable
how similar TV is to a drug. A person can have had a bad day, but once they begin watching
a TV show, they're not thinking about their bad day - they're thinking and feeling whatever
the TV show is designed to make them think and feel - several hours can pass without
a thought given to the events of the day.
Like a drug, TV allows people to avoid
dealing with their problems. It also provides them with an easy
entertainment option - one that doesn't require interacting with the real world
(instead of planning a safari in Africa, a person can click over to the nature
channel - instead of asking a girl out, the same person can thumb his way
to the Playboy network).
TV isn't all bad,
though. It's popular for a reason. People like it. It makes them
feel good - if only for a few hours. We live in a world where technology
is advancing at an exponential pace, class divides are increasing, and America
is losing a war in the Mid-East. TV allows people to ignore all
that. Some people might argue that we need people to turn off the TV and
get mad about these things, but in this day and age, when someone gets mad about
politics, he straps a bomb onto himself - and in 20 years he'll release a
bio-weapon. Furthermore, there's a very real question as to whether most
people can add much to a debate on these issues anyway. We live in an era
of increasing specialization. Even if people put away their TVs, would
people have the time to learn everything they would need to about science,
politics, religion, etc. to offer relevant opinions about those topics?
Perhaps people would be ignorant of and alienated from major decisions and
decision makers even if TV didn't exist. Maybe a bunch of vegged out TV
addicts aren't a problem, but instead are happier in their ignorance?
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