On 21 September 2006, Nielsen Media Research, Inc. revealed the latest statistics about America's TV habit. Americans now watch an average of 4 hours 35 minutes of TV every day. This is up three minutes from last year. Furthermore, a TV is playing in the average American household for 8 hours and 14 minutes every day. That is also another record.
This means that if you are an average family, you are probably having difficulty controlling your TV watching and your quality family time is suffering. These two simple strategies will help you painlessly reclaim a portion of your family time from the tube.
1) Start by turning off the TV at dinner. Approximately half of families today eat dinner in front of the TV. However, dinnertime is the perfect time for the whole family to connect. It is an opportune time to relax and get the news about everyone's day. The family news is far more important than any "evening news." You will also avoid real family drama, when you stop watching "family entertainment" shows and start listening to the cares and concerns of your real family.
2) Second, reserve an hour per day for family time. Turn off the TV, computers, and video games and set aside an hour for interactive quality family time. Put up a "Do Not Disturb" sign on your front door. This may seem like a large chunk of time at first, but it will be relatively painless if you take it from some of your TV programming. Although many families complain about a time crunch, the average family has a TV playing for a phenomenal eight hours per day. Turn it off.
You could even continue watching all of your favorite shows by planning ahead. Record the shows ahead of time, and skip all the commercials. Every hour of TV has approximately 16 minutes of commercials (some have more). The average family that is watching 4.5 hours of TV is viewing over an hour of commercials every day. Skipping the commercials is a painless way of getting an hour to spend every day with your family.
With only one hour of that chunk of TV time, you could enjoy many activities together as a family. Instead of watching TV, you and your family could go for a walk. You could all go outside and play together as a family. You could read together, swing together, catch together, kick together, bike together, hike together, fish together, run together, jump together, cut together, paste together, sing together…. You get the idea. Your family could enjoy so many fun activities. All you have to do is turn the TV off for a while.
Source: http://www.nielsenmedia.com
Katherine Westphal is the founder of Trash Your TV and the author of the revolutionary TV-FREE System. Find out how you can get in control of your TV, video games, and computer addictions with The TV-Free System. |
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