Turn off the TV Week!
Posted: April 21, 2009 Filed under: Food and it's Impact on Our Health 5 CommentsIt’s TV Turnoff Week, so just do it. From April 20 to 26 join millions of people worldwide and switch off your set. Find a more rewarding and active life–at least for a week.
Last year 5 million people in the USA alone turned off the box and found that they had all sorts of extra time to do things they had been meaning to do. Like talk to their friends, read a book, take a walk…
Image from indymedia.org
The founder of the campaign which he started thirteen years ago, David Burke, sums it up: “The odd thing is that it wasn’t until I stopped watching TV that I started feeling really strongly about it. Suddenly you walk into a room and everyone is watching TV and you think, ‘Why isn’t anyone talking?'”
The statistics about television watching are scary. According to the Financial Times, here in the UK, “84 per cent of men and 85 per cent of women rate television viewing as their most popular leisure activity. By comparison, “Spending time with family or friends” was chosen by 75 per cent of men and 82 per cent of women. People watched an average of 3.88 hours of TV a day, so by the age of 75 the average Briton will have spent more than 12 years of his or her life watching television.” The average child by the time they are six will have watched a whole year’s worth of television. More than half of three year olds now have televisions in their bedrooms.
Now that you are completely horrified and convinced that you will never watch the box again,
here’s what to do instead of watching the tube:
* Invite over friends or family you haven’t seen
* Pick up your local what’s on guide and get out to see live entertainment
* Fix up your bike and take it out for a ride
* Walk around the neighborhood, go to places you have never been to before
* Go to bed really early with your lover, partner – or a book
* Go though your stuff and sell things on ebay or do a garage sale
* Listen to some new music
* Pay someone a surprise visit
* Dust off your cook books and cook something amazing
* Get a new piece of technology e.g. An MP3 Player and work out how to use it
* Participate in a local event
* Join a political party
Read more about living without TV at Whitedot.org
Meal Delivery Service by Millie Barnes 
Im a few days late – but think i’ll join in. I hid our tv once – my husband literally panicked! We went a few weeks and life was so much MORE. MOre time, more talking, more achieved! I ‘unhid’ it after a few weeks and the old habit of automatically turning tv on to see what is on have come back.
LikeLike
What made you un-hide it?
LikeLike
Love this blog I’ll be back when I have more time.
LikeLike
Good Luck.
LikeLike
I know, I know! Most Americans will never give up thier plug-in drug. One of the things I challenge my clients to do is to turn it off for a month. Many are quite shocked at the changes it brings in thier lives and relationships. My parents raised us without TV until I was 14. And they took us camping on Lake Okeechobee for 3 months every year. We camped in tents with no electricity or running water, and no TV or radio. My dad would commute back and forth from work on weekends. It was an incredible gift, I learned cook over a fire, fish, how to live in the woods, how to entertain myself…but mostly, just how to be.
TV robs us of so much.
LikeLike