Television Daze

Our television has been “broken” for five days now. We broke it by pulling the plugs out.

When the 3-year-old watches TV he does it with frightening devotion. He is totally fixated on the screen. And his behaviour seems to be more intense generally on days when he watches it.

I also had some concerns about the link between depression and watching TV. (Certainly I start to feel depressed listening to the awful music that seems to go with kids’ TV. Why does it have to be so mediocre? Why do the little girls have such high nasal voices?)


When my partner is depressed he watches a lot of television. But sometimes he seems to start feeling depressed after watching a lot of television. And it’s not that he’s watching the news all the time. It’s impossible to maintain optimism in the face of the nightly bulletin. He watches history and music docos; though I guess the content of those can be very depressing in itself too.

So I did a bit of a net search on TV and depression in kids. There does seem to be some correlation between large amounts of TV viewing (around 6 hours a day) and mental health problems with kids if there are also other factors present, including a parent’s depression.

Six hours is a lot of TV and we weren’t anywhere near it, but since the TV broke, after an initial period of withdrawal (such heart wrenching cries, mummy pleeeeeeease!) things have settled down very quickly.

We still use the computer for DVDs but that’s not every day and we all sit and watch them together. Also, the fact that the screen is smaller means that he’s not as physically captivated by the images, less engrossed.

I think that’s a good thing. He doesn’t fall into that weird hypnotic trance that I used to see with TV. I haven't seen a huge change in behaviour although bed time is much better. Less screaming all round. The best bit has been watching him figure out other ways to amuse himself.

Having to maintain the "broken" status of the TV also means a lot less viewing for the adults in the house. I wonder if that will have any effect on our behaviour.

Flo