ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 23, 1997 TAG: 9704230025
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
The third annual National TV-Turnoff Week begins Thursday. It's a chance to rejoin the human community.
THINGS TO do in the coming week: Tour the McDonald's in your community to see if you can find Beanie Babies. Work a jigsaw puzzle. Build a treehouse. Read a Goosebump book. Play on the swings, seesaws and sliding boards at the park. Write notes - pen and paper, no e-mail - to friends.
These are suggestions for adults. Kids can join in such activities after they've cleaned their rooms, washed the cars and hidden the remote control so their parents can't find it.
Yes, it's time again to connect with the real world, to get a life apart from television's soaps and mayhem. An estimated 4 million American will try it, participating in the third annual National TV-Turnoff Week that begins Thursday.You don't want yours to be the only family on your block watching ``Seinfeld'' reruns, do you?
North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt calls the turnoff campaign a tool for fighting crime and violence. Maybe: Some studies indicate that TV violence feeds real-life violence. Certainly, also, the tube has too much sex, too much trashy talk, too much hype.
Yet the importance of this special week is less a protest against programmatic content - the advent of cable has, after all, given consumers an array of program choices, excellent as well as junky - than it is a reminder that TV viewing can become an unhealthy addiction. Overdone, it can rob us of the value of human contacts and real-world pleasures like talking to members of our own families and to neighbors; joining community organizations in worthy civic pursuits; and exercising our minds and bodies.
Doing for one week without the U.S. average of four hours a day of TV viewing just might tone up mental, physical and spiritual flab.
LENGTH: Short : 39 linesby CNB