Pollute Me TV

I am going to start by making a bold statement: TV can pollute our minds. It can control our lives. In general, it is quite evil. Think back to the last time a crisis happened in our nation. It was on the television, hour after hour after hour, which turned into days. Yes, we do have the right to be informed, and yes, I guess we can turn off the TV, but one can’t help it. It pulls you in. You have to keep watching it. I am sure we have all been there at least once in our lives.

I was almost pulled into it earlier this week with the huge drop of 777 points of the stock market. Having had a mom in the financial industry growing up, I started my 401k at the age of 20. At this point in my life, I have that vested at 100% into the stock market. Monday was not a good day for me. Luckily, I am at least 30 years from retirement. Once I realized that, my television got turned off. I can’t help but think of those though that lost huge amounts of money and sat and continuously watched the news reports on it. Didn’t I mention television can be evil?

Don’t get me wrong. I love my television, perhaps even more than the next person. When you have lived in North Dakota all your life, my first 18 years practically in the middle of nowhere (largest city, Aberdeen, SD – located 88 miles from where I grew up), television becomes a really good friend. And even in my return to college life, the TV is still one of my best friends, providing me the background noise I just seem to need to study and then sleep. So really, I think I am pretty neutral, if not even a bit more on the side of TV.

Speaking with my friend Jani the other morning, she stated how she set her aging father in front of the TV set as she ventured off to work. She promised she’d be back on her lunch break to check on him. Due to unforeseen circumstances within the last week, Jani is now in charge of her 80+ year old father until she is able to locate another nursing home that will accept him. As she described this to me, she said she felt like a parent, plopping her child in front of the television set to occupy him so she could get something done, letting him tune in to whatever TV land had to promote for the day.

Ironically, a few hours later, I sat down to read Pavlik. And he was throwing out percentages about television, one in particular of how many Americans use TV as their #1 means of obtaining the news. In both the conversation and Pavlik’s rant on ratings, I couldn’t help but think yes, we certainly are taking in the news on TV, but how much other content are we taking in as well, may it be through subliminal messages, advertising or concepts that we interpret in our own way?

Jani’s father is a grown man. Yet, she was concerned about what he was going to watch on television all day and what kind of ideas he would have and stories he would tell her when she got home. One day she recalled something he had seen that made him scared to be in a nursing home! “You are just going to drop me off there and never come see me again. I know. I saw it on TV!” is the statement he made to her. If an elderly man is deriving this out something he watched, what about the shows our children are seeing, or should I say the ideas our children get from these shows? Parental controls aren’t likely used in many homes in America, though I am a huge proponent of parents being more in tune with what their kids are watching. It cannot be helped sometimes, and there may even be a show that seems very appropriate, yet ideas can be formed from it that simply aren’t. Or a commercial during the show as sometimes those too aren’t exactly “kid-friendly.” Jani has yet to figure out just what it was her dad watched that one day. As she headed out the door that morning, she had no choice in what to do with him other than handing him the television remote. I am sure she spent her day hoping the same show wouldn’t be on again that day.