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How to take advantage of Television
(and not let it take advantage of your family)
by Jim Sevy
I grew up watching television. My Wife did not. My children have grown up with not only television, but VCRs and DVDs. Television has increased the speed at which news travels and it can bring situations and images into our homes that previous generations would not have had the opportunity or regret to witness. Things like the Vietnam war, the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the L.A. riots and 2000 presidential election coverage. I wrote a poem, back in my college days that relates to this:
Ideals
The TV ads flickered
As the magazine pages
Fluttered in the cold wind
From the open window
And deceptively molded the
Cultural ideals that
Moved their thoughts away
In a horribly loud
Diminuendo of Affection
Undeceived eyes sense
The care borne for most
And anxiously view
Sometimes conscious
Steps forward
Copyright 1985 Jim Sevy
Both good and bad information, things we want to see and others we would rather do without. The catch is that, good or bad, taking this information in takes time.
Time is like money. It is precious, especially to my children when I finally get home from work or have a day off. Like our money, we need to budget the way we use our time. That budget needs to be based on our values and priorities. If we spend our time on things that aren't important to us and don't further our individual and family's progress, we are going to miss out on the things that we really want to attain.
TV, good or bad, can be a robber of time. The programmers of TV would have us believe that we "need" to watch our favorite show, and that we need to watch it when they present it. They would have you sit on the couch and suck up whatever they dish up. During "prime time" you are given what you "want", plus commercials for products that people want you to "want" or even think you "need". In addition to the commercials for product, you get commercials from the TV programmers telling you what you "need" or "want" to watch, when they want you to watch it. These commercials are the worst for our family because you can be watching a fairly benign show and these promotional commercials are for a very adult oriented show and often feature the most obnoxious, innuendo filled, segments of the promoted shows. By exposing your children to this, you risk sexualizing and desensitizing them.
Luckily, technology offers families a solution. We decided that we would determine, as a family during our weekly family council meeting, which of the shows that would be broadcast during the upcoming week we would like to watch. We then coordinate the videotaping of these shows. We then choose when we are going to view the shows. Because we have them on tape we can view them at any time, individually or together. We can choose to keep them as part of our library or to tape over them. We are also able to fast-forward through the commercials.
This approach is "pro-active" it helps me teach my children that they exercise a choice whether or not they actively choose or not and that with a little determined effort they can maintain "control" over themselves and how their time is spent. This philosophy will spill into many areas of their life. If I can teach my children to actively "choose", with thought and appropriate consideration, it will be more likely that the choices they make will be a progressive, "right" choice. I hope that these ideas will help you and your family make good choices.
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