I stopped watching television in the late '80s, having decided
that it was all a waste of time, and that anything I really needed
to know I could learn through more mentally demanding media. I
followed the first Gulf War on the radio and the Clinton
administration through magazines and newspapers. I can’t claim to
understand the news any better than in my TV-watching days, and
I’ve found other ways to fritter away the hours that I would have
spent tuning in, but I like to think that abstinence has made me a
bit less intellectually lazy.
My passivity — both physical and mental — and short attention
span are afflictions I attribute to tens of thousands of hours in
childhood spent in front of a 21” black-and-white screen. (My dad
had heard that color sets gave off a more dangerous kind of
radiation.) So when I decided to quit, I resolved that no child of
mine would suffer similar exposure. He’d be allowed to watch
edifying videos, but no broadcast channels, except on historic
occasions like presidential elections or impeachments.
The first time I suspected that things might not work the way
I’d planned was when I realized my fiancée was a watcher.
Not an addict, just a recreational consumer, yet someone who
apparently felt no guilt in watching Law and Order instead
of reading Policy Review or Don Quixote. Was this
the example she wanted to set for the next generation?
Then I observed friends of mine who already had kids. They all
acknowledged the dangers of TV, and they all let their children
watch it. A lot of it. “Sometimes you just need five minutes to
balance your checkbook,” one mother told me, with an exhausted
sigh.
I tried to be sympathetic. Five minutes now and then couldn’t do
much damage, I thought. Yet mesmerizing a young boy or girl for
hours with a flashing, screaming machine seemed just short of
criminally abusive.
Then it happened. Our son was born, and for a few months there
was no peace in the house except when he slept, which was
mercifully often though never for long. Once he learned to slumber
through the night, the day became a continual struggle to keep him
clean and quiet. I longed for a way to distract him that didn’t
involve singing, dancing or putting toys on my head. My thoughts
drifted, inevitably, to the box in the living room.
Like most people who betray their principles, I have managed to
justify myself by appealing to another set of principles. Every
time I park my 18-month-old son in front of the set and pop in a
Barney or Teletubbies tape, I tell myself that it’s helping teach
him English (since I’m the only person who speaks the language to
him regularly).
Once those tapes have taught him to say “uh-oh” and “I love you”
(if they don’t drive his parents nuts first), we’ll probably
increase the English-language offerings by getting a satellite
dish. Which means I’ll soon be watching CNN and FOX and BBC most of
the day, instead of reading or writing. But after all, raising a
child is just one sacrifice after another.
