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Should parents raise their children without television?
No.
Do I think, as a parent of two preschoolers, that kids today watch too much TV?
Probably.
Does that mean that ANY television is bad for your kids?
Of course not.

The problem with answering the question "Should parents raise their kids without television" with a negative is that you are in effect saying "Yes, you should raise your kids with TV," as if TV is a necessary tool for rearing children. People have been successfully raising children without television or LeapFrogs or the Internet up until the latter half of the previous century, so I think it's safe to say we don't need television. But most of us want television, and so do our kids. Is that wrong? Not necessarily. And in this day and age, prohibiting your kids from watching any TV at all may be actually a bad thing. In a society like ours that is fueled by electronic media (TV, movies, Internet, etc.), too much exposure or no exposure at all to this media can create isolation. If a person does nothing but sit in his basement and surf the Internet and/or watch TV all day, he becomes isolated from people in the real physical world, and that is unhealthy. If a person never watches television at all, is never exposed to the Internet and never knows what others are being exposed to, then he is isolated in a different way. He is unable to comment upon or discuss what is out there and cannot decide for himself whether something on TV is good or bad or just plain stupid. In both extremes, whether it is too much exposure to media or none at all, the ability of a person to function in society is undermined.

There are some people who say that any exposure to television is bad. Children who watch television in any amount can become irritable, are not capable of creative thought, cannot pay attention in school, and become, in effect, zombies staring stupidly at a screen. Some have gone so far as to say that these television-watching drones grow up and can't even write a coherent one-page essay in freshman English. Is television entirely to blame for this? I don't think so. A television is an inanimate object, a tool. Like any tool, whether it helps or hurts you depends on how you use it. I would go so far as to say that in some cases, television can even be a good thing.

There is something about popular culture that is both fascinating and repugnant (the latter being represented by Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton). We cannot get away from

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