I guess it came down to "Parenting" and "Personal Responsibilities". On the other side, since I have learned that these concepts are racist code words, I don't know what to say...

I agree, it's weird to see people sitting around a bar or restaurant watching the TV instead of having conversation. What is it with people who need background noise? I find it annoying and distracting. If I am not actively watching something on TV, I prefer to have it turned off. However, I can't remember the last time I had my TV on, when I wasn't using it to watch a movie. I can see anything from TV that I want to watch on my computer, or rent a few episodes of a show on Netflix. I don't get cable. I did rent and watch the first couple seasons of 'Weeds' and am watching 'The Wire' now, which I like. But I can rent those and watch them when I have time. I can't believe the way people organize their time around their TV shows.

I hate TVs in public places too. I don't watch TV at home (just DVDs) and and I'm so visually-oriented, when I go someplace with a babbling TV it requires a constant effort of will to not look at it.

I think the reason there are TVs all over the place is to give people an excuse to avoid interacting with each other - while still spending time in a "social" area. When everyone can be alone together, they don't feel so lonely.

I hate TVs in restaurants because I am easily distracted, and I find myself unable to concentrate on my dinner companions, who then become pissed off at me.

My favorite Indian restaurant has TVs. I think because it is in a hotel, so caters to people travelling alone. The food is great, but I hate the TVs.

I also do the DVD thing at home, we dont get cable and our reception is horrible.

I know when I read a book my imagination will never be out done by a TV show. I think kids watching TV destroys creativity. TV rarely leaves anything to the imagination like a book or an old time radio show does.

My kids are in their 20s now. I have never forgotten something at one particular event. It was a Halloween party. Most were dressed as Mutant Ninja Turtles. All the kids kept asking me what I thought of their costumes. I would politely comment they looked good. After a little while some parents came up to me and asked how I could tell the show's characters apart. So I explained the weapons and belt buckles, plus that they were named after Renaissance artists. Then I asked haven't you ever seen the show? The reply was basically, well no... I went on, so you are using the TV as a babysitter and have no clue about what they watch? You have no clue about what the show teaches? Not even the level of violence in it? Well no...

Parenting is a job. Kids learn what they are exposed to. Using TV as a constant babysitter to me is child abuse. But then again I actually followed the movie ratings. My kids can vouch for that. It still annoys them I did it that way.

On TVs in public places, I annoys me as much as having to listen to some fools cell phone conversation. I know I ask them to turn it off, rarely with success. Also I try not to go back to restaurants with TVs. I figure losing my business is the only way they might learn. The next battle coming soon will be wearable computers.

I rarely watch tv. I was always a reader and have to admit that while my daughter is a reader, my sons would rather eat glass than read a book. My one son is very into sports and my other plays guitar, so they aren't glued to a television either.

As far as tv in public places goes, I do enjoy meeting up with friends during football season at our local bar. We all host at our homes, but sometimes its nice going to the local bar or sports bar and hanging out while getting served. We still socialize while screaming at the sets, but I am a football addict and can only be found in front of a tv on Sundays unless of course, I go to the game.

Eight hours per day? Where do people find the time? My kids get up, we have a family breakfast, and they go to school. When they get home in the evening, they have 4-1/2 hours before bedtime.

In that 4-1/2 hours we have dinner, they practice piano and do their homework for the next day. On average, that leaves them about 2 hours of free time. On the weekend, they obviously have more time, but that's also time for sports, hobbies, and so forth.

Just where do people find the time to watch television for 56 hours a week? Seems to me you would really have to work at it, to find that much time to waste...

After about an hour of TV, I go batshit and need to move around. I can't imagine watching 8 hours.

"I went on, so you are using the TV as a babysitter "

I don't have kids but I have 10 neices and nephews. I can only say 1 thing about JD...he or she is a totally annoying parent!! The kind most people would love to bitchslap! Bad enough parents sit around judging people who don't have kids, but then you get someone like JD who lectures other parents on how to be a good parent at a party?? Dude...stay at home and be your perfect self alone.

As for 8 hours of TV per day? Sounds impossible. Most people work and/or go to school, I would hope. That means that the number is averaged wrong. What was the sample of the American population?? How was the study conducted? How was the sample taken? I am questioning the number and how it was acquired.

Bradley13, that's what I was wondering, too. How do you fit 8 hours of tv into a day?? I'll tell you the worst thing to happen to children and tv is tivo. My god, they can watch whatever they want when they want. When I was kid I got to watch cartoons on Saturday morning and that was it. I couldn't come home from school and watch 8 hours of tivo'd crap.

I wonder about the study, too... Maybe they're adding up individual's TV watching time. I doubt that the entire family is sitting around watching TV for 8 hours a day. So if I watch CNN for an hour, and 30 minutes of local news, and husband watches 30 minutes of news and a one-hour episode of Top Gear, then we're at 3 hours... but we're NOT watching 3 hours each.
I question the methodology, but do agree that too much TV is harmful. The cartoons I've seen snippets of lately are mind-numbing.
As far as TiVo or DVRs go: I think I watch less TV because of them. I have specific programs I want to see, so I only watch when there's something I'm interested in that I've already recorded. And, I can skip commercials.

I couldn't find anywhere in that document [almost 400pages, so maybe I missed it] where they defined how they collected the DATA. Are people actually watching, or is the TV simply "on". My mom turns on the TV in the morning, because she doesn't like the quiet. Once she goes to work it's off, but back on when she gets home. It's likely to be on 8+ hours a day. But that ISN'T watching. Their methodology for gathering the info is really important in these cases. Like Nielsen ratings, which are garbage these days, I think they are using too much statistical magic to make the point.

And? There is a TV in every breakroom, that I constantly turn off. I've seen people go in for a cup of water or to get their lunch out of the fridge, and turn it on. Only to then turn and leave, not watching it at all. WTF? Do you need the ghost voices that bad?

Part of the problem with the statistic is multitasking.

A Yankees-Red Sox game is at LEAST 3 hours. I have the game on, and while that's going on I'm doing other things - cleaning, working on customer stuff, cutting mats and framing pictures, etc.

I only actively watch when a good play happens. If my radio reception wasn't ass, I could probably get 90% of the flavor by listening on the radio.

Instead, the TV eats gigantic gobs of electricity so I can re-watch the cool plays on the Tivo.

But during baseball season, I'd get chalked up as at least 4 hours of TV a day.

Even if that 8 hours is multitasking with the TV on, it's interesting how much more background TV there is in the US compared to other countries.

That's because so much background music makes people want to retch.

> I hate-hate-hate TVs in
> restaurants and bars.

Amy Alkon, Amy Alkon, that's right, she said it, you heard her.

And airports, and juror assembly rooms, and auto dealerships. Just because I'm getting my oil changed doesn't mean I want to listen to Oprah yammer about women who love too much.

I'd worry less about the television and more about the internet. Check out some of the hours kids log playing Warcraft.

Heh. Number 1 is right now practicing piano, and #2 is in front of the tv. No school today, we didn't make it to PA, so there you go. But #2 just got back from a sleepover and she has some phone calls to return, so the tv goes off in about 10 more minutes, and she's done for the day. I'll put the news on while I'm getting dinner ready. After dinner, the dishes get done, we'll all sit down to watch Jeopardy, then there's homework, showers, getting ready for bed. Sometimes BF will put on a hunting show or a football game; once in a while we'll watch a movie. I guess we tend to watch more tv in the wintertime, because we're not out and about so much then.

I'd worry less about the television and more about the internet.

Right? Watch what happens when mom cancels this kid's World of Warcraft account:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YersIyzsOpc

From Dr. John Rosemond's column on Sept. 17th (title, "Parents: Here are five basic back-to-school tips"):

"Limit electronic entertainment to nonschool days only, and even then allow no more than five total hours per week. The research is increasingly unequivocal: screen time of any sort decreases attention span. Learning from a real-life, flesh-and-blood teacher requires being ready to ask questions, being ready to answer questions, memorizing, conducting independent inquiry, transferring what you've learned to paper, listening to the teacher's feedback concerning your work and correcting your mistakes. As for television alone, a researcher once found that truly gifted children tended to watch no more than five hours of television a week. The national average is 25 hours per week per child, which is simply to say if you want your child to be average, let him watch a lot of television."

(snip)

Personally, I think most parents - especially those who don't/can't make their middleschoolers stay with an adult after school - can't quite hope to limit "electronic entertainment" to five hours a week. Especially if that includes texting, which I personally do, IMHO. (Rumor has it that more and more employers are becoming increasingly desperate for young workers who are actually COMPETENT at dealing with clients on the phone or in person, since so many have had little practise at that.) Besides, if kids want to text, they should pay for it, just as they should be financially responsible for their own cell phones, since the landline is "free." (And there are good reasons NOT to let any kid under a certain age have a cell phone, anyway, self-paid or not.)

However, it only stands to reason that if you wouldn't let your children be on a diet that consisted of 50% fat and sugar, you shouldn't let them have even 15 hours a week of EE out of a presumed 30 hours of leisure time. Many leisure activities are important enough to need practise every day, after all, such as reading, learning face-to-face social skills, exercise, learning to play alone when necessary, and maybe a few more. EE is not - or at least not important enough to need a lot of practise per week.

When I was a kid I watched way too much TV. As an adult, I gave up cable in 1990 and then gave up TV altogether in 2002.

I've since encountered several people who find it "very strange" that I don't have own a TV nowadays. Whatever! To each their own!!

I wrote: I'd worry less about the television and more about the internet.

Flynne replies:

Right? Watch what happens when mom cancels this kid's World of Warcraft account:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YersIyzsOpc

It's funny, I was just watching that video. The original video is posted by DaSexSymbol20, who apparently makes it his business to provoke his brother into similar hysterical rages.

I worry about that kid. He's going off the deep end and his brother's filming of him then humiliating him by posting it to youtube.com is hastening his departure from sanity. Go to youtube.com and check out the videos of DaSexSymbol20 and you'll see what I mean.

TV for kids is a natural, rational response to being blamed for letting kids play unsupervised in their neighborhoods.

Why blame parents for TV when the nanny state will take the kids away for child endangerment, unless the parent stands over them while they play, not merely 100 feet away or with an open kitchen window.

Our political masters have declared that the outdoors is too hazardous for kids to play, or even walk 2 blocks to school, unless a parent guards them. They have implicitly required that kids be locked up in a series of buildings with escorts between them.

Ironically, they have declared that we should coexist with "natural" wild animals in many neighborhoods, providing a good reason to lock up the kids.

Then, they complain about the stupidity of parents who allow their children to watch TV, the only entertainment allowed to them. The parent is supposed to be a constant home teacher and entertainment clown.

Turn off the TV, they say, and have the children read and draw, as in an 18th century dream of the cultured, royal child. Supposedly, as children were raised for 2,000 years before the TV was invented.

Stupid policies have bad consequences. Excessive TV is just one of them. The world is not simple. There are tradeoffs. Remove all risk and independence from childhood (and adulthood), and say welcome to TV and passivity.

Slogan: Rather 100 inactive, passive TV children than 99 independent, boisterous ones.

My guess is that this policy creates 5 alcoholics for every child's life saved by overprotection. That is a tough tradeoff imposed by reality. Is that tradeoff worth it?

And by the way, Flynne, those videos are staged.

Patrick, are they? I seriously thought the first one was for real, the kid didn't know he was being taped in that one, at least it didn't seem so. He was so losing it, it wasn't funny. Hitting himself in the head with a shoe, and trying to jam a remote control up his arse? I mean, he was really in a rage in that one. The next few, and especially the one with the grandmother, looked like they could have been. But the first one and the one with the crappy truck, I dunno. I thought they were for real.

PS How do you know? Did the brother have a disclaimer or something?

I'm skeptical about the claims on both sides. 8 hours a day on the average is difficult to imagine. What's the median? On the flip side, "studies show" is just an empty appeal to authority. Which studies? In what way or ways is TV or computer use bad? Do those studies differentiate between kinds of internet use? An hour of WoW is different than an hour of reading Amy's blog and an hour of reading Star Trek fan fiction. (It might be OK to take someone's kids away for letting them do the latter.)

Well, why would anyone shove a remote up his ass because his mother canceled his WoW account? (Gee, that's a very good quote, isn't it? Worthy of the immortal Bard himself!) Also, he exits his room and his brother comes tearing into his bedroom almost immediately afterward. Shouldn't his brother have seen him in the hall or something?

Also, did you see the one with him up in the tree, when supposedly, he finds out about the video? This is four months later, and he only just finds out about the video because his brother shows him? Never sees it on the news? No one in school tells him about it?

How about the one with him smashing the guitar or the microwave? And when he's screaming at the "betrayal" when he's playing WoW? Doesn't his mother, at some point, step in and get this kid some professional help?

I'm one of the people who would skew the average upward (although technically I'm not watching "tv" but movies and streaming video). I have it on in the background all day as I work, play WoW, do my needlework, etc. Otherwise it's just deathly quiet - the dog is a lousy conversationalist. Occasionally I sit down to actually watch a movie, but it's not common.

You play WoW? Why did you gank that poor girl's funeral then? Have you no shame? What about her poor guildmates who were in mourning? What a horrible thing you did!

(Just kidding. I know you yourself weren't likely one of the dozen or so folks responsible for it.)

My brother's ex-wife left him for a guy she met playing WOW.

I am laughing my ass off. Now I know I'm not the only one who watched the WoW spazzout kid, plus several of the other videos. My vote is that they are staged. But the one with the grandma was a riot! And "Stop betraying me!!!" - I'm going to start using that one.

I watched quite a bit, and I almost never watch today, except for work. I don't think it's that big a crisis, but TV's an easy target. Kids are far more visually sophisticated and there's a much bigger TV buffet available today.

I think Jacoby's overstating, and indulging in some middle-class hand-wringing. Poor kids who can't go outside, and don't have other alternatives are at risk for all sorts of ills anyway.

And Korean kids are in danger of video game addiction.

"The research is increasingly unequivocal: screen time of any sort decreases attention span."

How about blogging? {vbg} Oooh, Shiny!

Of course, the statement depends on what is on the screen. Any football buff can tell you every play in a three-hour game; I can spend about 30 minutes at a time evaluating a procedure against a process drawing...(hmm - what valve sequence is safest?)...

...and I bet a bunch of you could watch Firefly for hours at a time. I've never even had the urge to skip the opening credits. The song's that cool.

Pirate Jo writes:

I am laughing my ass off. Now I know I'm not the only one who watched the WoW spazzout kid, plus several of the other videos. My vote is that they are staged. But the one with the grandma was a riot! And "Stop betraying me!!!" - I'm going to start using that one.

Oh, hey, don't be embarrassed because you watched them! So did I. You should never feel that way. You got something silly and over the top to share? I'll watch it!

Regarding whether or not they're staged, there's a guy on youtube.com named waffflepwns [sic, note the three fs] who did a phone call with Stephen (the spazzout kid), which he has on video. Stephen, if it really is him, confirms that they're staged.

Like I said, the reason I think they're staged is because of the video when he's up in the tree, supposedly there sulking because he just found out about the video because his brother Jack showed him. This video is supposedly taken four months later. Yet, he's just now seeing the video for the first time. Never on youtube.com, never from a classmate who recognizes the brothers, never on the news (that video made the O'Reilly Factor). So, how do you reconcile the video's obvious popularity with the subject's consummate ignorance of it?

You may have a point, Andrew.

However, I'd bet there are JUST as many parents who keep their kids at home - except when it's time to play sports - because they don't want them sneaking off to some kid's back yard to play video games or to surf on a laptop unsupervised. While getting increasingly fat from lack of exercise.

Yes, I know the arguments about how for boys, especially, video games are the main form of male bonding these days. But, as I said, you don't need lots of practice every week to learn the basics of those games. (Learning to win at video games is clearly another matter, but parents really need to band together to create more playdates where no visual electronics are allowed. Then more kids would be on the same footing.)

BTW, Miss Manners said in one of her books:
"If you invite guests over to play poker, they are not allowed to demand to play soccer instead."

I.e., when it comes to truly non-interactive entertainment such as TV (which anyone can do without the help of guests), she said the hostess' mommy has every right to say to the other mommy, "Daniela would love to have Rosalinda over to play, but we don't allow the TV to be on, so if Rosalinda can't stand to miss her cartoons, maybe that's not a good idea." (The invited kids apparently were in the habit of demanding to go home if they couldn't watch TV.)

My TV watching was severely limited when I was little -- I managed to catch enough "Sesame Street" to learn some Spanish, and caught some "Electric Company" and Saturday cartoons, but generally we were supposed to be doing something else. I do think frequent TV watching slows down language acquisition -- the kids seem to catch up eventually, though.

That having been said, I can think of a few reasons why American kids might watch more TV than kids in other First World nations:

1) Americans have a higher birth rate. That means parents tend to have more kids to watch after, and thus more to do for those kids.

2) Americans work longer hours and enjoy less state-sponsored childcare. That means they're more tired when they're interacting with their kids.

3) Americans tend to obsess about being Good Parents, to the point of exhaustion...which is when they look for any escape hutch possible to maintain their sanity. Enter TV.

I don't think 1) and 2) are bad, but I do think they have an effect. There's no free lunch; TV may be one way we're paying the bill.

Friends, Marion is back. Did you marry that guy?

TV today is a lot better than when I was a kid. But I still spend the vast majority of my time on the Internet. If I want to watch a TV show I check it out on Hulu.

T.V. is fine, just don't let them get used to crap. Anything worth seeing comes out on dvd.

FYI- A good book on this subject-The Plug in
Drug, Television,Children and the family
-by Marie Winn