12-year sentence for watching TV

On average, we spend 12 years of our lives watching television. By the age of six, a child has already spent one whole year in front of the TV.

Television is responsible for a wide range of child health and development issues — it may be a bigger factor in obesity than either diet or exercise. It’s also implicated in half of all violent crime.

These aren’t the views of cranks or crackpots — they’re the results of serious social research. One major study in the Journal of the American Medical Association came to the stark conclusion that ‘If… television technology had never been developed, there would today be 10,000 fewer homicides each year in the United States, 70,000 fewer rapes, and 700,000 fewer injurious assaults. Violent crime would be half of what it is.’ And the psychologist Aric Sigman says that television ‘has unleashed a worldwide cultural force equalled in history only by religion.’

Can’t afford to ignore

Surely these issues give us something to think about. Christians often say, ‘We don’t have a television, so we don’t need to concern ourselves with this.’ However, this is nonsense. Even if we never watch a television programme in our lives, the people around us are watching TV every day. It is what they are talking about in the office on Monday morning, and with their friends on Friday evening. It moulds what we think and how we live. As followers of Christ, we cannot afford to ignore its influence. If we are concerned to reach those around us, television provides us with the same kind of points of contact for the Good News that pagan Greek writers provided for Paul on Mars Hill (Acts 17.18-24).

So how should we respond to its massive influence? Paul encourages the Ephesian Christians, ‘Be very careful, then, how you live — not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is’ (Ephesians 5.15-17, NIV). In a similar vein, the Psalmist prays, ‘Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom’ (Psalm 90.12). Both of these passages speak about what it means to be wise (or foolish). Both speak about stewardship of time, and one of the biggest issues with television is the way it steals our lives.

Deathbed question

Sigman asks, ‘If you were on your deathbed and someone could give you back those missing 12-and-a-half years to be with people you loved, and maybe do things differently, would you take their offer? Or would you say, ‘No thanks. I’m glad I spent the time watching TV’?

Why do we let television steal our lives? The trite and obvious answer is that it’s just harmless escapism — but let’s pause to reflect a little more deeply on this. Jesus said that he came so that we could have life to the full (John 10.10).

Fullness of life

Certainly, the main thing he is talking about is eternal life. But is it his intention that we should enjoy this fullness of life only after we die, while our experience here is little different from those around us who are ‘without God and without hope’? Surely not! Yet we apparently feel the need to escape from our lives. Have we missed out on something that the Lord intends for us? What is it that we are trying to escape from? Maybe we are looking for something in television that seems to be missing from our real lives. Perhaps we’re looking for substitute friendship, excitement, or a sense of worth (we all need to be heroes!) Do the second-hand lives we live through television seem somehow more attractive than our real lives?

A well known passage in Jeremiah, says: ‘My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water’ (Jeremiah 2.13, NIV). God’s people at that time were looking for life in all the wrong places — depending on foreign gods and foreign military powers, rather than on him. Are we today looking for ‘life to the full’ in the wrong places — and if so, what do we need to change?

Stealing our lives

Our aim in raising these issues isn’t to burden ourselves with guilt. Rather, it’s to help us think through why we are letting television steal so much of our lives, and how we could use more positively some of the time that we spend watching television. The American TV Turnoff Network says: ‘Don’t let the TV displace what’s important: family, conversations, exercise, play, reading, creating, thinking and doing.’

Breaking the grip

So how can we break the grip of the TV? One possibility is to go on a ‘television diet’. Just as ordinary dieting means cutting down your food intake and eating more healthy foods, a television diet means cutting down the amount of time you spend watching television, and watching better programmes. (Of course, crash dieting doesn’t work. Effective diets involve long-term changes in lifestyle.)

Another possibility is a ‘television fast’. Just as ordinary fasting means going without food, a television fast means going without television. Fast for a day, or two days, or a week. Consider regularly having one day a week when you don’t watch television.

Why not choose this week to do one positive thing instead of watching a television programme? It could be the first step towards getting your life back.

David Couchman

This article is based on an extract from a new course called Facing the Challenge of Television. This course, for home groups, Christian Unions and individuals, is available as a digital download from http://www.facingthechallenge.org/television.htm.