Spring 2003
Glued
by Brendan McLaughlin
As long as I didn’t stand directly in front of it, it didn’t look like much. Framed in fake wood paneling, the 20-inch television screen stood on a nondescript table, dedicated solely to the purpose of aiming the Hitachi’s images straight into the eyes of a group of mesmerized girls seated on a blue L-shaped couch across the room. From its unassuming position in the corner, stacked with remote controls and appliances with cryptic acronyms like VCR and DVD, the screen bathed the faces of 19-year-old Chelsea Fimia-Moe and three of her roommates in a ghostly white light and filled their ears with the steady hum of theme music and inane dialogue.
The constant barrage of charismatic product-hawkers coupled with the inhuman pallor splashed across the girls’ faces filled me with apprehension. Unfamiliar with the surreal fantasy world of television, I hunkered down for what promised to be a long hour — silently wondering what I had gotten myself into.
Fimia-Moe explained Boston Public’s previous episode: kids cheating on tests, baffled teachers and Mini Me stuffed in a locker. I commented that it didn’t seem very realistic.
“But that’s the appeal,” she said. “Isn’t it?”
Earlier that week, Fimia-Moe sat barefoot on her front porch and explained why she enjoys watching television. Despite taking a full load of classes at Western Washington University and serving on the Student Senate, Western Student Political Action Club and the Facilities Services Council, Fimia-Moe still finds time to watch TV several hours a day. She said she watches television as an escape from her long hours at school and work.
“I think if I had less stuff to worry about I’d be able to dedicate more of my mind to doing the things I used to love doing in high school,” she said. “Reading, writing, poetry. I miss it so much.”
Fimia-Moe is typical of most Americans who, despite the fact that they work longer hours than the citizens of any other industrialized nation, still find time to squeeze in more television viewing than anyone else. The average American watches four hours of television per day according to a 2000 Nielsen Media Research report. With marketers cajoling viewers into buying more, and generations of TV-addicted Americans losing their sense of stewardship for the earth, researchers and watchdog groups claim that America’s most devastating instruments of environmental degradation might be televisions.
Dennis O’Neill, a certified dependency counselor and Drug-Free Workplace manager for Boeing, said Fimia-Moe’s explanation is strikingly similar to the language a drug addict or alcoholic would use to justify their behavior.
“TV is an escape from reality,” he said. “It’s the same with dope or drinking. Even though you know you have this important stuff to do, like take care of your family, you watch TV instead.”
On April 21, 2003 Fimia-Moe quit television for one week. Cold turkey.
April 21 to 27 was TV-Turnoff Week, a national event run by the nonprofit TV-Turnoff Network based in Washington, D.C. An estimated 6.4 million people participated in the event last year, and organizers estimate at least 7 million took part in 2003.
The TV-Turnoff Network’s mission is to encourage children and adults to watch less television in order to promote healthier lives and communities. More than 70 national organizations, including the National Education Association and the American Medical Association supported the week-long event.
“The movement to reduce TV time is bubbling up all over,” said Frank Vespe, executive director of the TV-Turnoff Network. “People are starting to realize it’s really unhealthy to watch so much TV.”
On the Sunday before her TV-free experiment, Fimia-Moe, while expressing some reservations, said she looked forward to a chance to break from her routine.
“I’m a little nervous,” she said. “TV is what I use to relax. Hopefully, after this week
that will change.”
Fimia-Moe fits what Juliet Schor, a Boston College sociologist and author of “The Overworked American,” calls the exhaustion model.
“Watching television becomes the default option,” Schor said. “The longer hours of work leave people more tired and they come home and turn on the set.”
Economist Giacomo Corneo from the University of Osnabrück in Germany has spent the past several years researching the connection between work and leisure time activities. In his paper, “Work and Television,” Corneo documented that the average American works roughly 1,850 hours and watches 1,500 hours of television annually. In the Netherlands, where the average person works about 1,370 hours annually, TV-viewing is about two-thirds of what Americans watch.
Corneo said, however, this connection only exists at the national level. Time-budget surveys conducted by Pennsylvania State University, the Journal of Economic Literature and the National Bureau of Economic Research show that when a person’s work hours increase, their
TV viewing decreases.
He said the reason for the correlation at the national level was based on the country’s cultural standards. Americans, unlike citizens of most other countries, place little emphasis on socializing and community cohesiveness. In many European countries like Germany, for example, people spend a lot of time with their friends and family.
“In societies of this kind, social life takes much time,” Corneo said. “Since the remaining time is relatively little, work hours and television viewing are short. In societies where you do not have those expectations, there is a lot of time left for working and TV.”
Fimia-Moe started by making time for herself.
On Tuesday of TV-Turn Off Week, Fimia-Moe remained enthusiastic. She began riding her bike to school, reading “Pride and Prejudice” and said she was more relaxed and focused without TV.
“It’s only Tuesday and I already feel so much better about my week,” she said. “I get less distracted. It has helped having a well-defined goal of no television, but it’s still hard. It’s like trying to get over a boyfriend.”
By Wednesday her enthusiasm had flagged a bit. Although she admitted to ordering a pizza that night, Fimia-Moe said that being TV-free had curbed her consumption of marketed products, particularly fast food.
“I definitely feel more satisfied with what I have,” she said. “I’m more conscious of what I buy. But I’ve been watching TV for so long those messages are permanently in my head.”
David Wann, former EPA official and co-author of “Affluenza: The All Consuming Epidemic,” said he believes viewers take commercial messages literally — they do want it all, he said, including the things they don’t need.
“In this passive state we are at the mercy of a marketing mechanism that easily manipulates our psyche,” he said. “It sets us on the quest for more than what you need.”
Network programming contains up to 21 minutes of advertising per hour according to the Association of National Advertisers. Schor and Wann said the more someone watches the more they think they need, and the more resources they consume.
“The lifestyles portrayed (on TV) suggest an affluent, consumptive ideal,” Schor said. “It creates a very high perception of the typical Joneses.”
Respondents to a survey Schor conducted for her book, “The Overspent American,” spent an additional $208 annually for each hour of TV they watched per week. Although Schor was leery of drawing a direct causal connection between watching and spending, the results show viewers are heavily influenced by television messages.
Many researchers are disconcerted by a relatively recent trend in advertising: companies targeting young children as potential customers. Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, an advertising watchdog group, said marketers appeal to children as young as possible, taking advantage of their vulnerable and trusting nature.
“They want us from cradle to grave,” Ruskin said. “Get them early and have them for life.”
According to the 1999 Kaiser Family Foundation study, “Kids and Media at the New Millennium,” the average American child 2 years old to 18 years old watches just less than three hours of television daily. Twenty-four percent of children under 6 have a television in their bedroom.
Western marketing professor Linda Alvarado said marketing is now so sophisticated that a child as young as one might have already established brand loyalty — preference for a specific brand or label based on the product’s image.
As a mother of four children ages 3 to 18, she said she has to look at television from the dual perspectives of a marketer and a mother. While she appreciates an effective commercial, she is still protective and cautious about what her children see.
“As a mom, I’m very selective of what they get to watch because I know the pervasiveness of the advertising messages,” she said. “Americans at all ages are being bombarded by the media.”
Numerous studies have shown children who watch a lot of television tend to be more violent, obese, materialistic and have lower reading test scores, Ruskin said. According to a 1999 Senate Judiciary Committee Staff Report, by age 18 children have witnessed 16,000 TV murders and 10 percent of all youth violence is directly attributable to TV watching.
The American Academy of Pediatrics is highly critical of childhood television viewing, stating that children under 2 should not watch any television and older kids should watch no more than two hours a day, one third below the national average.
“Instead of teaching how to have a rewarding life, they teach us to value materialism, heathenism, violence,” Ruskin said. “It’s terrible parents have to contend with corporate ads and fight for the values of their children.”
Wann said because Americans are so busy, they don’t have as much time for their kids and inevitably use the television as a babysitter. The children watch TV characters instead of playing with their friends.
“The kid says, ‘I’m lonely. Those kids are having fun while I sit here by myself. I want what they have,’” Wann said.
For many young students, even the classroom is no longer a refuge from the ubiquitous advertising messages.
According to Schor’s paper, “Work, Family and Children’s Consumer Culture,” 40 percent of the nation’s public school children grades six to 12 are subjected to mandatory viewing of Channel One News, a daily 12 minute commercial broadcast. The daily show includes 10 minutes of news and two minutes of ads for a captive
audience of eight million children in 12,000 schools nationwide.
And, as with adults, more television equates to more spending. Expenditures by 4 to 12 year-olds increased six-fold to $23.4 billion between 1980 and 1997, according to Schor’s paper. Children were also indirectly responsible for $550 billion in parental purchases in 2000, an increase from $50 billion in 1984.
Wann recently returned from a trip to the rainforest near San Jose, Costa Rica. After three weeks without electricity, he returned to his home in Colorado and has remained television-free since. He recalled a period of walking through the Costa Rican forest, inundated with life — a bright red macaw, abundant flowers, buzzing insects and even a fur-de-lance, a snake with the most potent venom on the continent.
“When you’re having these real experiences you realize how trivial TV is,” he said. “TV is about wishing I had life. With the wishing comes a longing for what TV has to offer, which is a temporary fix from some material good.”
Wann also said TV leads the viewer to believe that life should be fast-paced and thrilling — two adjectives missing from his description of Costa Rica.
“TV separates us from reality,” he said. “In comparison to television, the environment is boring. Why protect it? We’ve lost our sense of stewardship.”
Many people like Western sophomore Jaimie Laitinen have gone TV-free permanently and never looked back. Laitinen said she doesn’t watch TV because she has so many other things she wants to do and believes TV instills materialistic and selfish values. She explained she doesn’t make a distinction between work and leisure time because she enjoys all her various activities, including photography, printmaking, drawing, painting, reading and exercise.
“What’s the use of TV when I have so many real activities I could be doing?” Laitinen said. “You’re just throwing away a certain amount of your time. The clock goes around and you didn’t do anything.”
Barbara Brock, a recreation professor at Eastern Washington University, was the first to study the lifestyles of TV-free families. According to Brock, TV-free families are much more likely to be involved in community service projects, have strong parent-child relationships and children with high grades in school.
In one study, Brock found a typical television-watching family spends 38 minutes per week in meaningful dialogue, compared to 55 minutes per day for TV-free families.
“We’re so caught up in the lives of people on television we don’t have relationships with those around us,” she said. “The TV-free families I’ve worked with simply wanted more time for marriage and family in the face of a busy life.”
During each of my frequent and unannounced visits to Fimia-Moe’s house throughout the week, I mounted the steps with a mild sense of dread. Would I open the door to the sound of the TV trumpeting its victory, gloating over its reclamation of the slack expressions of Fimia-Moe and her roommates? Would she make it to the end?
Sunday, April 27, the final day of TV-Turnoff Week, was a beautiful day in Bellingham. Fimia-Moe sat in the same spot on her porch that she had one week before, again shoeless, admiring the fading sun as it slid behind an old church across the street.
She had just returned from a weekend retreat to Lewis and Clark State Park, 621 acres situated on one of the state’s stands of Old Growth Forest.
“The stars were really amazing,” she said. “I hadn’t seen them in so long.”
She did it — TV free for one week.
Overall, she said, going a week without TV was a great experience, but she looked forward to being able to grab the remote again.
“I just realized there’s so much more I can do with my brain,” she said. “I’m now completely glued to ‘Pride and Prejudice.’”
She planned on cutting back to no more than one hour of television per day except, of course, on Thursdays when all her favorite shows are on. Despite her positive response to a week of abstinence, endorsing it as something everyone should try, she couldn’t commit to a lifetime without television. As she freely admitted, watching TV is addictive. You wean yourself off it a little at a time.
Still, for one week in April, the Hitachi sat dormant, forgotten in its corner except for the sheet of paper taped to the screen reading “Turn off your TV Week.”