4.5 Hours A Day!

That's the amount of time the average American spends watching TV these days according to this recent USA today article. 31.5 hours a week. That means Americans spend over an entire day every week watching TV and over two months per year. I just keep thinking Neil Postman's phrase "entertaining ourselves to death." The article also states that although there are only an average of 2.55 persons per household, there are 2.73 TV sets. The reasons are obvious. First, you can watch TV anywhere, living room, kitchen, bedroom, basement, etc. After all, it is a shame to have to make supper or exercise or rest in bed without the constant, soothing stream of mind numbing entertainment (I'm getting sarcastice, I know. I can't help it.). Secondly, what if you want to watch the game, and your wife wants to watch American Idol. What a quandary! But with 2.73 TV sets the solution is simple. Divide and conquer.

I'm really trying hard not to go overboard on this, but the statistics are staggering. According to the research done in Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, one hour vegging before the tube reduces your social interaction for the day by 10%. So for the average adult there is 45% less social interaction per day. We complain about our hectic lifestyles, but maybe our problem isn't so much in the amount of stuff we have to do but the amount of stuff we think we have to watch. In any case, the next time we're tempted to say, "I just don't have the time," perhaps the reality is we just watch too much TV.