No TV is so 1990. Really, today 'No TV' would be easy to achieve while still overdosing on Youtube, netflix and so on.
Computers screens are more often than not the delivery vector for your daily dose of passive consumption. And it's not just the desktop machines either, it's the iPads and the phones that happily join in.
Even not having a TV no longer means that you are immunized against this, and being without internet access is far worse than not having cable.
For one the internet is far more addictive in many ways (think minecraft, the various role playing games and social websites) and besides that it has so many legitimate uses that one could easily burn up a whole day without ever leaving the comfy chair in front of the big tft in consumptive mode without so much as a glance at the television.
There is a major difference between viewing TV content on your computer and TV content on your television - on your computer, you need to actively select new content once your current content is finished. Television has the property that once turned on, you are subjected to a constant stream of content (including advertisements) and thus it is much easier to turn your brain off.
Actually a lot of it is specific to TV, because some families just leave it on in the background all the time:
“I like to call it secondhand TV,” said Dr. Brown...
Studies cited in the guidelines say that parents interact less with children when the television is on, and that a young child at play will glance at the TV — if it is on, even in the background — three times a minute.
> No TV is so 1990. Really, today 'No TV' would be easy to achieve while still overdosing on Youtube, netflix and so on.
I disagree. You can leave TV on and have an uninterrupted stream of content, images, sound, noise constantly delivered to you with zero effort. Not so with Netflix or Youtube.
You can't "leave Netflix on" because at the end of the program it will just stop and wait for you to choose another one. That alone makes a huge difference (to say nothing of the absence of advertising).
Computers screens are more often than not the delivery vector for your daily dose of passive consumption. And it's not just the desktop machines either, it's the iPads and the phones that happily join in.
Even not having a TV no longer means that you are immunized against this, and being without internet access is far worse than not having cable.
For one the internet is far more addictive in many ways (think minecraft, the various role playing games and social websites) and besides that it has so many legitimate uses that one could easily burn up a whole day without ever leaving the comfy chair in front of the big tft in consumptive mode without so much as a glance at the television.