Few adults are aware of it, but television has completely altered the way that children spend their time. Yesterday's children spent much of their days playing games and exploring the outdoor world around them. But today's children spend their time with their eyes glued to the television screen and their bottoms firmly planted on the living-room rug. Youngsters who should be outdoors getting bruised, dirty, and exhausted, exercise only their blinking eyelids as they sit entranced, hour after hour, in front of the tube. Evidence indicates that television interferes with the capacity to entertain oneself and stifles the ability to express ideas logically and sensitively.
Television viewing replaces essential play activities with passivity rather than activity.
Parents often regret not spending more time with their children. Caught in time-binds that limit the number of hours available for family interaction, equally problematic is the average family's misuse of the TV set. Poorly managed television wastes opportunities for kids to learn how to relate to other people, including their parents and siblings, and relating with their families is a desire of today's youth. I'm convinced, however, that the family's loss of control of its time is one of the most perplexing of the problems faced by parents today. We realize that, as the family supper table succumbs to the chatter of TV noise, hope for a daily period of sharing, caring, and interaction is almost zero.