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How does TV figure into your life?



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morah




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Jul 25 2010, 9:21 pm
DH and I are a tad hypocritical when it comes to TV. We both grew up on a steady diet of TV (although DH's parents were way more strict than mine about limiting time and content), we went more to the right in Israel and decided when we got married not to have a TV in our home for hashkafic reasons. The thing is, old habits die hard. Just because we don't have a TV set in the house, does not mean we don't watch any... Whenever we are in a home with a TV, we watch, and the fact is, we also watch plenty of stuff at home on the computer thanks to our little friend named Hulu. We still want to think that we're ok because we don't actually have a TV, but who are we fooling? We're up on all the latest shows. We still talk about how we don't want our kids watching TV, but we ourselves still watch so much of it (we don't have kids yet, but that can change at any time). TV is, well, our guilty pleasure. It's still very much a part of our lives even though we (would like to think we) are ideologically opposed.

I'm not necessarily looking for ways to kick the habit once and for all (although feel free to give advice to that effect) but I'd like to know if anyone else has this ambivalent, somewhat hypocritical relationship to television. Also, feel free to discuss the (de)merits of TV (although no bashing please!)
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yo'ma




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Jul 25 2010, 9:27 pm
Even though I'm not addicted to it, I do watch and a little too much, but I did mention to my dh that I don't mind if we got rid of it and only because of the kids. I do limit what and how long they do watch. Anyway, it would be very hard for my dh to give it up because he's a sports nut. Seeing it online is not the same.
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morah




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Jul 25 2010, 9:41 pm
I'm a baseball nut, and I can't get the Yankees online because mlb.tv will only let you view teams not in your area. I don't mind listening on the radio though- I'm used to it, because that's what I did whenever there was a night game on a school night and my mother wouldn't let me stay up to watch. When we say TV is junk, we're not talking about sports, though ironically, in our current situation, sports is what we don't have access to, while we can get all the junk in the world!
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Rodent




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Jul 26 2010, 12:47 am
We watch tv, my kids watch tv. There is a lot of merit to tv amongst the garbage, it's all about filtering. I spent a couple of years without tv and I hated it. I found it made it more difficult for me to feel a part of where I was living (culturally, overseas), I felt isolated from the world and the internet was not enough to counteract this. I never felt that I became a part of the places and I was happy to have tv back in my life when we moved here and took it out of storage.
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ora_43




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Jul 26 2010, 2:32 am
My dh watches sometimes (news, sports, and some shows that involve things blowing up in outer space), and I let the kids watch for about 2 hours a week total. I try to save their two hours, as in, I won't let them watch under normal circumstances, so that dh can let them watch on a night when I'm working and it won't go over the limit I set.

I rarely watch, I have no patience for it. But if I'm working out at home I'll watch the Daily Show online while I do.

My parents limited my TV watching growing up and I'm really glad they did. For one thing, the content is IMO a huge problem. Think about it - if someone came home having seen a man be shot to death, wouldn't we expect them to be traumatized? But TV shows regularly show that and worse (not all, of course - obviously I'm not letting my kids watch NYPD blue (if that's even still on), and Dora the explorer is thankfully gore-free). It can't be good to watch realistic depictions of murders and other violent crime, especially in the context of TV shows or movies, which tend to minimize the impact of what's going on (you never see the bad guy's crying family at his funeral).

But beyond the content, the format is a problem. Your brain gets good at what you train it to do. If you spend too much time training your brain to be used to fast-paced, brightly-colored content that requires little to no intellectual effort - or worse, if you train your kids' brains to do the same - you just make real life harder.
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prettyone




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Jul 26 2010, 2:45 am
grew up without a tv and very happy about it, dh grew up with it and doesnt want to raise our kids with it. we do not have one and we dont feel that we are lacking in any way.

if we are away and there is a tv we have no prob watching a bit. we just dont want one in our own home. we do watch movies though if they are clean.
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Ruchel




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Jul 26 2010, 6:09 am
Rodent wrote:
We watch tv, my kids watch tv. There is a lot of merit to tv amongst the garbage, it's all about filtering.


Yeah, that.

There are nice shows, great documentaries, an Orthodox emission by a Consistoire rabbi once a week... and now my dh has discovered the yeshivish tv (613 tv)!
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