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On the surface, television appears to be the perfect babysitter. Parents can put their children in front of this device and it has the effect of making them sit still and remain quiet for hours on end. But, as we park our kids in front of the TV and grab the remote control to turn it on, that feeling deep down inside, that suspicion that maybe it’s not as good as it appears on the surface, eats at us. There is a harmful side of television.

Television is empty. It’s not real. There are no risks. It demands nothing of us. You can sit for hours in front of the TV and not move a muscle (except your eyelids when you need to blink). Not only is your body not active, but your mind is not active either. Any time you're viewing life from an armchair you’re not engaged in real life. If you begin watching TV as a child you’re lulled into a lifestyle of lethargy. Children learn at an early age to live vicariously through TV.

TV doesn’t demand anything of you but at the same time you don’t get anything out of it. Real vision requires engagement and many times it’s uncomfortable, but the more difficult it is, the more real it is. Doing good and being good requires making an effort and expending energy. Television requires no effort.

A rationalization in favor of TV is, “We grew up with lots of TV and look at us, we turned out just fine.” Take a look around. The world is a mess. There are all kinds of major problems. How can we say that TV hasn’t negatively affected our society in any way? You can’t blame it all on TV, but the massive media presence in our formative years and beyond does not contribute to the making of people who are emotionally centered, kind, functional, and happy .

Another argument is that TV can be educational. Some people only watch the Discovery Channel and the History Channel. I don’t deny that TV can be educational. There are many good programs, especially on Channel 13, but I would argue that the vast majority of TV viewers don’t use it as an educational tool. Studies have shown that the percentage of self-professed educational TV that has little or no educational value is 21%, so even when you think your watching educational TV you might not be.

A 2005 study in Northern California found that a television in the bedroom lowered the standardized-test scores of third graders. And in 2001, after analyzing data on more than a million students around the world, the researcher Micha Razel found "little room for doubt" that television worsened performance in reading, science, and math. The relationship wasn't a straight line but "an inverted check mark": a small amount of television seemed to benefit children; more hurt.

TV undermines family life. The average American watches over four hours of television per day. US children spend about two hours per day with screen media. When the TV is on, there is usually little communication happening between the parents and the children. TV harms children and hampers education. The American Pediatric Association recommends that children two years old and under watch zero hours of TV. The average time per week that the American child ages 2 – 17 spends watching television is 19 hours and 40 minutes. Ten hours or more of TV watching per week has been shown to negatively affect academic achievement. The hours per year the average American youth spends in school is 900 while the hours per year the average American youth spends watching television is 1,023.

TV promotes obesity. One in three adults in the United States are technically obese. Sixty minutes of moderate physical activity is recommended for children each day. This is hard to accomplish if four hours of their free time is spent in front of the television. TV promotes violence. The number of violent acts the average American child sees on TV by age 18 is 200,000. The number of murders witnessed by children on television by the age of 18 is 16,000. TV promotes overconsumption. The number of TV commercials viewed by American children per year is 40,000. TV inhibits political awareness. These days hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on television campaign advertisements and the majority of these commercials are attack ads. 59% of Americans can name the Three Stooges, while only 17% of Americans can name three Supreme Court Justices.

Al Gore wrote, "More and more people are trying to figure out what has gone wrong in our democracy, and how we can fix it." Gore fixes the blame on the power of television. He argues that a discourse dominated by televison--it is now almost half a century since television replaced newspapers as Americans' chief source of information--inherently corrupts the Founders' notion of the reasoned deliberation in the civic forum that they judged essential to a republic's survival: Today's massive flows of information are largely in only one direction. The world of television makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation. Individuals receive, but they cannot send. They absorb, but they cannot share. They hear, but they do not speak. They see constant motion, but they do not move themselves. The "well-informed citizenry" is in danger of becoming the "well-amused audience." He compares television viewers to the chickens he learned how to hypnotize growing up on the family farm. He then asserts that a citizenry so reliant on such a medium is susceptible to any kind of manipulation and falsehood. He is concerned that through political television advertisements, the consent of the governed is becoming a commodity to be purchased by the highest bidder.

TV is extremely habit forming. You find yourself wanting to see your favorite program each week when it comes on. Then you find that they have reruns of the program everyday. Before you know it you have to be in front of the TV every night at 8:00pm and then again at 11:00pm.

In a time when the mass media are children’s first teachers about the larger world, when children in the United States spend more time watching television than in any other activity, children also need to understand that much of what they see in television shows, films, and video games is counterfeit. They need to understand that violence only begets violence and solves nothing, that obtaining materials goods, while necessary for living, is not a worthy end in itself no matter how many commercial messages to the contrary. They need to know that suffering is real, that hurting people has terrible, often life-long, consequences no matter how many cartoons and video games make mayhem and brutality seem normal, exciting, and even funny. They need to learn to distinguish between being hyped up and feeling real joy, between frantic fun and real pleasure, between healthy questioning and indifference or cynicism.

If you’re going to let your children watch TV, do it in moderation and have some discretion over the programs that they watch. Keep in mind that you could be doing other stuff with your kids like reading to them, listening to music with them or taking them outside to play.

This is a song that the Oompa Loompas sang when Mike Teavee was shrunk by the television camera in the book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”.

The most important thing we’ve learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, never, NEVER let
Them near your television set—
Or better still, just don’t install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we’ve been
We’ve watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone’s place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotized by it
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don’t climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink—
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK—HE ONLY SEES!
‘All right!’ you’ll cry. ‘All right!’ you’ll say,
‘But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!
We’ll answer this by asking you,
‘What used the darling ones to do?
How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?’
Have you forgotten? Don’t you know?
We’ll say it very loud and slow:
THEY…USED…TO…READ! They’d read and read,
And read and read, and then proceed
To read some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching ’round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be!
Good gracious, it’s Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and—
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How The Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There’s Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole—
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks—
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They’ll now begin to feel the need
Of having something good to read.
And once they start—oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They’ll grow so keen
They’ll wonder what they’d ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.
P.S. Regarding Mike Teavee,
We very much regret that we
Shall simply have to wait and see
If we can get him back his height.
But if we can’t—it serves him right.

By Roald Dahl