Judaism & TV

Imagine driving down the road and seeing a bumper sticker on the car in front reading

“I have a TV-free home: I want slim kids!”

That could foreseeably happen in the wake of a new scientific study on the effects of TV. Many of you might have heard the media stories that researchers at New Zealand’s University of Otago looked at how much TV children aged five to 15 watched.

The International Journal of Obesity study found the 41% who were overweight or obese by the age of 26 were those who had watched most TV.

They warned then that adults who had watched a lot of TV as children were more likely to go on to be overweight, to smoke and to have high cholesterol.

The truth is there have been numerous studies over the past decades chronicling the negative effects of TV. Just one example: a study published in the Readers Digest magazine several years ago showed that people who watched TV were generally more aggressive. Significantly more wives whose husbands had watched ‘action’ programmes reported their husbands treating them more aggressively and roughly than those whose husbands had not watched those programmes.

Despite this one often hears the question ‘what’s the Jewish view of TV?’ Well this is also is quite straightforward. Most if not all ‘serious’ authorities are against it on the grounds that if ‘you are what you eat’; you will certainly be influenced by what you see. Since much of what’s on TV is not exactly wholesome, spiritual or even vaguely educational, such a visual ‘diet’ is simply bad for the soul – and Jews need to have healthy souls (non-Jews do as well – but let’s first try and convince the Jews!)

Now the usual retort to the above goes a bit like this: “what about the ‘good programmes’ like the News, current affairs and Nature programmes.” My answer is simple: “what’s so ‘good’ about the News. Most of what is reported on the News is sad, bad or both and many News programmes simply manufacture crises in an attempt to keep viewers riveted to their seats. The relentless parade of crime, disease, death, conflict and warfare etc. tends to demoralize rather than inspire. We start to feel as though our ‘small’ good deeds and words are ultimately irrelevant in the grand scale of all the world’s troubles.

Including good, heroic, and inspiring things that go on in the world is just too much like hard work for journalists and reporters who find it far easier to phone police stations, mortuaries and hospitals to get some juicy ‘news’ stories.

As for ‘nature programmes, I’ll admit some are pretty interesting (I remember them from my childhood). But if we are honest we should acknowledge that the number of such programmes compared to the mass of drivel and banal rubbish (not to mention immodesty and violence, etc) on TV is a bit like a drop of milk in a whole pot of chicken soup. The soup is still chicken soup because the amount of milk is insignificantly small. In our case looking at the whole TV ‘pot’ as it were, a little bit of nature programming doesn’t make it kosher – it’s just too insignificant. [Nowadays you can easily pick up nature videos/DVDs so you don’t need the TV even for that!]

If we want our children to able to influence the ‘streets’ and the world outside for the better when they grow up, then we need to make sure we insulate them from those ‘streets’ when they are young and impressionable. It is then that we need to surround their bodies and souls with good and holy experiences.