Disconnecting TV?

Stop! Don’t make assumptions yet, I have a 32 inch LCD TV at home and some torrents in progress in this PC but I also knew that TV did more harm than good to me and my children. It has been a topic of interest to me recently that I ordered a book about it from Amazon. .

Its not easy . According to Paul Graham

Distraction is not a static obstacle that you avoid like you might avoid a rock in the road. Distraction seeks you out.

and

And technology is continually being refined to produce more and more desirable things. Which means that as we learn to avoid one class of distractions, new ones constantly appear, like drug-resistant bacteria.

Bacteria? Tell me about it -passing by the game store on my way back from solah at the office everyday — made me think that I need Archos 605 badly !

Ummi asked me recently if watching TV is haram? . So as usual I would changed the topic and said hmm.. where did you got this idea from? I am no expert in this area to say about halal and haram but the idea of TV is bad for us is nothing new to me indeed I think to most us
As parents sometimes, we used TV as a replacement or excuse for us to get the children occupied.

Jaja! Pi tengok TV lah abah got work to do!

It happened so many times that I don’t feel bad about it (OK until now) and if you see my huge collection of DVDs — maybe you can imagine how serious I am in this “time wasted” profession. Can you teach your children just by letting them watch Sesame Street? No — according to Neil Postman TV only provides passive information transfer without 2 way-interactions and do you realize that most of children’s program today are a series of commercial that make you buy things! (Ernie puppets, Barnie , telletubies .. anyone ?!) — even worse if you’re fan Oprah — I told my wife recently that watching Oprah just made her felt insecure and worse making her started buying things advertise in the programme! I don’t like Dr. Phil too;)

Hey, Mom and Dad! Do you know…?

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics:

• The average child watches 3 hours of TV a day — 2 hours of quality programming is the maximum recommended by the Academy.
• Active play time is needed to develop mental, physical and social skills.
• Children who watch violence on TV are more likely to display aggressive behavior.
• Young children don’t know the difference between programs and commercials.

Sources http://www.aap.org/family/smarttv.htm

Back to the topic of distractions, it is not just about TV anymore – almost all media surrounding us has become an entertainment device. The mobile phone, the computer ,the internet can be one too– I could spent hours doing “nothing” infront of a PC on a weekend morning just to notice that its already time for Zuhr prayer . [Not to mention hours fixing the wireless connection or even waiting for the antivirus completed their scanning].There goes my valuable Thursday! (I live in KSA where Thursday and Friday are non-working days or weekend!). My friend used to say that time moving fast nowadays — where did the time go ? You’ll suddenly notice that is already mid-year 2008 but it felt that New Year Eve was just passing by yesterday! [Later we came to agreement about the wasted time on the computer! ]

So will I disconnecting my TV? Our satellite TV decoder was dead 2 days ago, a hard reset didn’t work and also my son complaint that the TV in his room was not working anymore. I think its a sign ..?

p/s Do read this article about your children and TV.

MIND CONTROL?