by Mona Gallagher

Created on: January 06, 2009   Last Updated: March 14, 2010

The stereotypical male loves football, remote controls, and a wife who can take care of all distractions during extreme sports broadcasts, like the Super Bowl. It's interesting to think about how that electronic image box we call television moved into our homes and revved up our world knowledge, sensory perceptions, vocabulary, and sunk our physical activities in a short time.

Before TV, there was (and still is) radio. The family gathered around the set to listen to shows such as The Shadow, Jack Benny, music, news, and sports. Early radio had dead air time because scheduled shows were not available around the clock, so listening to the radio was special but it didn't dominate our culture.

In addition to radio, there were movies, picnics, ball games, block parties, sailing, and lots of physical activity to round out family time. Then television appeared on the scene in the mid 1940s and changed our lives as it began to dominate our leisure and family time in the USA.

If TVs were legal on the front dash of cars, I imagine they would have replaced radios long ago in the daily commute. Most people watch the news on TV everyday. It has taken over our home life and the lives of our loved ones, but we don't gather around the set as a family because there are usually two or more TV sets in our homes today.

Over the years, we've seen millions of news events and billions of TV advertisements. We've bought the products and continue to buy them because TV advertising gave them brand recognition. TV advertising has generated mega dollars and that kept it solvent for many years. It's a surplus of entertainment, news, sports, and special programming, but it's a one-way street.

Aside from operating the remote control, TV is a thing we adults observe. We're bystanders to what is going on inside the tube. Video games give TV hardware a new role with gaming, but they operate outside of the normal viewing of television programming and the benefit comes from interactive software rather than from traditional television.

What would we do without TV?

TV is so pervasive in our lives that employers even place TVs in employee lunchrooms.

All the recreational activities that were popular before TV are still available today. The politically correct answer to the benefits of living without TV would be more family time, outdoor recreation, or investing time in our communities and interacting with our neighbors instead of watching the latest soap episode, but would that really happen if there was no TV?

Today, television is losing some of its audience and appeal. Statistics show that people are spending less time watching TV and are spending more time on the Internet. The stats don't include work computers with Internet time.

The Internet is taking a large slice of leisure time that TV used to dominate. Young people between the ages of 18 and 29 spend almost 30 percent less time watching TV than other age groups. They're more likely to email, use instant messaging, and join social networking web sites. Students also make use of the Internet to supplement class work.

Internet activities are beneficial in many areas of our lives bringing more options in work and play, but they tend to isolate us from the other benefits of physical activity and leisure time. In weighing the many areas of benefits, our population seems to have moved from the mode of electronic viewing to electronic interaction.

There are thousands of things we can do and benefit from without viewing television, but according to a Pew Internet networked family survey, our favorite benefit away from television is Internet time.

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