An Illness, If You Had Time to Consider It

TV Turnoff Week was launched by Adbusters magazine and other organizations in 1994 and championed by TV-Free America, which is now called Center for SCREEN-TIME Awareness (CSTA). In CSTA changed the name in 2007 to TURNOFF WEEK, to reflect the growing number of devices people use to watch screened media. 2008 Adbusters changed the name of TV Turnoff Week to Digital Detox Week to reflect the growing predominance of computers and other digital devices.

There's a scary progression in today's world. Drivers are texting at the wheel, students are texting at their desks, and anyone in line is texting at the teller, cashier, or when they should be figuring out what the heck they're going to do when they get to the front of the line. Joggers go out in pairs and both are wearing their own iPods, ignoring each other. Can't make a highway drive without firing up the DVD player for the kids. The TV is always on, just background noise. Kids are watching commercials with the same intensity they should save for the regular programming, unable to discriminate between voluntary entertainment and mercenary entertainment. And we all have known for decades that the grow-light for a couch potato is rectangular.
And the groups that recognize it, who want to make a difference by silencing the static for a week, can't decide what to call their annual campaign. No wonder they can't be heard above the noise.

...the amount of time young people spend with entertainment media has risen dramatically, especially among minority youth. Today, 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week). And because they spend so much of that time 'media multitasking' (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7½ hours.

How the freak can one pack 10.45 into 7.5? By texting, with the TV on, with one iPod earbud in in front of your laptop? If EMF doesn't get you, the next blackout will. How will you survive?

Six days until we go Amish at my house. We're going to kill the TV, at the very least, for the week. Unplugged. This will hibernate the TV's symbiote, the Wii as well. I believe we'll power down the computer too. And the stereo. Why not? We have a piano, a flute and a guitar. We can make our own music.

We'll trench and lay the liner for our backyard creek and pond waterfeature. We'll sort the wood for a playhouse, using some to raise a planter for pumpkin seeds and an herb garden. Let's see, we'll have some Crossfitting to do in the backyard as well. We'll pull out the handpuppets and create a Punch n' Judy show.

I'm sure some other stuff will come up, once the initial shock wears off and some silence settles in.
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TV Turnoff Week update: Day 1. TV stayed blacked out. Instead, we did CF in the backyard, had a dinner for the extended family. Keep it up!
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TV Turnoff Week update: Day 2. TV loses again. Dinner with grammy at Frugatti's, then final prep on CC's tiger-striped Awana derby car FTW.
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TV Turnoff Week update: Day 3. Who needs TV? Church, then the whole fam did burpees and abmats. Cool-down with a Mom-lecture on friendship.