6 Days A Week We Wait For Shabbos Kodesh

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Must See TV?

After reading JewBoy's post about people assuming that every person that goes off the derech has a TV in their home, which is "absurd" as his title suggests, I decided to write a new post. This post has nothing to do with Frumness based on TV or no TV because people should not be judged based on that fact. This post is just simply a way for me to advocate that TV is not a necessity and we can live and be normal people without it!!

I recently read Rabbi Lawrence Keleman's student edition titled What They Don't Want You To Know About TV and Videos. It is basically a summary of his chapter on television in his book To Kindle A Soul. (Sorry I can't do links to all these things, I'm on dial up and that would just take way too long.) Anyway, in the small booklet it gives a lot of scientific research and data on the relationship between TV watching and a person's IQ, attention span etc. Basically it just proves that even watching "educational" programming is harmful to a person. It gives examples of tests done on infants where they showed them a "flickering light source similar to television but with no images." After 15 min. of being exposed to these lights their brains monitored sleep patters even though their eyes were open and they were watching the light, this was even without images or content at all. Pretty much what we all know is true, when you watch TV it shuts off your brain and is as if you are sitting in the dark just staring at nothing. It also lessens attention span, causes obesity, makes kids have less imagination (bc they don't play or need to imagine what things look like) they don't practice reading etc. You can read the book for all the specifics - all this is ASIDE from the fact that every program on TV now-a-days is disgusting or contains something inappropriate and if it doesn't then the commercials make up for it.

All that being said, once you get rid of the TV you won't miss it! If you aren't addicted to certain shows then after a while you won't even care that you aren't watching. You can still be normal and know about everything going on in the world WITHOUT TV!! It's an amazing thing and I totally advocate at least giving it a try! What have you got to lose?

2 Comments:

  • At 8:45 PM, Blogger Diana said…

    I was going to write "How normal were you to begin with?" but then I decided that it was mean.
    So instead...
    Have a good Shabbos!

     
  • At 9:20 AM, Blogger SuperIma said…

    Thanks Diana, it means so much to know you read my blog :)

     

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