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The government doesn't want your kids to see the premiere episode of Nickelodeon's new animated series "The Mighty B!" next weekend.
So naturally, the government must be stopped.
Okay, maybe that's overdramatic and slightly misleading.
But this much is true: The government has declared this "TV Turnoff Week," a time when it encourages all of us to do something besides sit in front of the tube.
It's not an evil goal. It's just not a very good idea.
Here's the situation: The National Institutes of Health, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is working with the nonprofit Center for Screen Time Awareness to promote this annual seven-day period when American parents are urged to keep children away from TV.
It's a serious campaign that aims to address a serious situation: American kids spend too much time watching TV, to the exclusion of, among other things, physical exercise.
U.S. children 8 to 18 spend an average of more than six hours a day watching TV, playing video games and using computers for recreational purposes.
The more time these kids spend in front of the TV, the more likely they will be overweight. At present, about 12.5 million American children and adolescents fall into that category, putting them at increased risk for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, asthma and other problems down the road.
As numbers, these are as bad as the last three months on Wall Street. There's little doubt Americans need to shape up.
But most Americans know it, and if they don't, they won't find a solution or even much enlightenment by skipping "Gossip Girl" or "American Idol."
We didn't sink this deep into the couch overnight, and getting off it will require redirecting a whole lot more than the remote.
While television is a visible symptom that takes much of the hit for our sedentary lives, it wasn't TV programmers who spent the last century inventing things that do more and more of our work for us.
TV didn't cut down on phys ed programs in schools and simultaneously rechannel physical activity into structured programs instead of running-around fun.
It wasn't just TV that sugared up our diet and made fast-food the gold standard for meals.
And it sure wasn't TV that sent kids to the Internet, computer games, IM and txt msgs. Those pastimes, the fastest-growing segments of media today, are yanking kids away from television, not driving them toward it.
So the misguided idea that turning off the TV for a week will make us all lean and mean is a little like an infomercial.
link
So naturally, the government must be stopped.
Okay, maybe that's overdramatic and slightly misleading.
But this much is true: The government has declared this "TV Turnoff Week," a time when it encourages all of us to do something besides sit in front of the tube.
It's not an evil goal. It's just not a very good idea.
Here's the situation: The National Institutes of Health, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is working with the nonprofit Center for Screen Time Awareness to promote this annual seven-day period when American parents are urged to keep children away from TV.
It's a serious campaign that aims to address a serious situation: American kids spend too much time watching TV, to the exclusion of, among other things, physical exercise.
U.S. children 8 to 18 spend an average of more than six hours a day watching TV, playing video games and using computers for recreational purposes.
The more time these kids spend in front of the TV, the more likely they will be overweight. At present, about 12.5 million American children and adolescents fall into that category, putting them at increased risk for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, asthma and other problems down the road.
As numbers, these are as bad as the last three months on Wall Street. There's little doubt Americans need to shape up.
But most Americans know it, and if they don't, they won't find a solution or even much enlightenment by skipping "Gossip Girl" or "American Idol."
We didn't sink this deep into the couch overnight, and getting off it will require redirecting a whole lot more than the remote.
While television is a visible symptom that takes much of the hit for our sedentary lives, it wasn't TV programmers who spent the last century inventing things that do more and more of our work for us.
TV didn't cut down on phys ed programs in schools and simultaneously rechannel physical activity into structured programs instead of running-around fun.
It wasn't just TV that sugared up our diet and made fast-food the gold standard for meals.
And it sure wasn't TV that sent kids to the Internet, computer games, IM and txt msgs. Those pastimes, the fastest-growing segments of media today, are yanking kids away from television, not driving them toward it.
So the misguided idea that turning off the TV for a week will make us all lean and mean is a little like an infomercial.
link
