Does TV Melt Your Brain?

TV takes up a huge amount of our time.

Now, consider this -- let us say that you will live 100 years, and that there are about 50 weeks in a year.

This means that your entire life might be as long as 5,000 weeks.

WHAT????

That can't be right!

Yep, I am afraid that 50 x 100 = 5000.

Now this should be shocking, because in fact you are probably already at least in your twenties, so 1000 of these weeks are already behind you...

Anyway, not to get too morbid, but simply to underscore that we spend an awfully large amount of time in front of the television, given that we may only have 3 to 4 thousand weeks left to live!!!

The question, then, is --- is it worth it?

I would in fact say that some television is worth the time we spend watching.

In fact, even frivolous television is probably important as a relaxant after a stressful workday.

The problem is that many of us automatically switch on the television when we come in the door, or as soon as supper/dinner is eaten, and then it stays on till we go to bed.

None of this might be an issue if life were not so short.

In addition, however, there is the question of whether television makes you dumber.

The answer to this is that it depends what you routinely watch.

Certain game shows and reality shows, as well as some crime series are mindless beyond belief.

Does it matter that we spend so much time watching these?

It matters if it means that our critical faculties are so underdeveloped that we cannot assess rationally, whether, say, our vice-president is manipulating our political system to selfish ends (or whether indeed he isn't, for that matter) -- and on this question, as on so many others, most of us use emotion and personal feelings to answer these sorts of questions...

My answer to the question of whether television melts our brains is that, when we don't watch enough critical, informative programming, but spend large amounts of time pouring our attention into how much money is in which shiny case held by some lovely young thing, or whether a carrot-topped detective is going to bust yet another Latino drug lord, then we are frittering away the tiny number of hours we are given - - hours we could spend learning to think critically about more important things, like why gas prices are so high, what it really means to have troops in Afghanistan, or whether the houses we live in and food we eat are full of toxins that might be poisoning our kids.