Six Alternatives to Television

OnWords

Six Alternatives to Television

By ANDREW GREENE

Jakarta – Television watching is the stinking ashtray on the dining room table. Though most profess to believe it is detrimental to our well-being, we refuse to turn our TVs off.

True, there are benefits to having a television. After all, it provides us with the cultural images that bind us to our communities. The Challenger exploding, O.J.’s white Bronco chase, the subsequent L.A. riots and the more-recent toppling of the Saddam statue are all events that I have, at least, virtually experienced.

Also, of course, there are sports to consider. Without television most of us would never be part of a World Cup or even, more importantly, the scrumptious shirtless-Beckham post-match interview. For many, sports are the main reason to have a television.

But, all of that notwithstanding, once we have made the decision to live a telly-free life, we need to think about how to fill the void. After much thought and research at sites such as www.squidoo.com/notv, www.thesimpledollar.com, www.whitedot.org plus other publications, I have assembled a selection of half-a-dozen activities that I myself start today as my own television-less existence commences.

Read it. Most of us have those books that we have always wanted to read. Ulysses and Under the Volcano head my list. I have started and quit both on numerous occasions and now that I have shut my box, I will open the first again and, this time, finish it.

Connect it. Sit down with your family. Have focused conversations and learn about one another. Go out, meet your neighbors, join clubs. The Living in Indonesia website at www.expat.or.id/ has a list of clubs that can help you connect with people who have the same interests as you do. Go nuts and use your free evenings to start dating your spouse or partner again.

Play it. The classic games of Monopoly and Uno never, in my opinion, go out of style. Some of my favorite childhood memories are of my family and I playing Risk, Monopoly, Spoons, and Uno.

Chess is a game I came to appreciate once I moved to Indonesia. This is a wonderful place to hone your game. Most drivers and security guards are willing to school you free of charge.

For card enthusiasts, the websites at www.pagat.com and www.cardgamerules.homestead.com are stocked with rules of games you have probably long forgotten how to play along with many you most likely have never heard of.

Learn it. Many universities now offer online degree and certificate programs. These can make productive use of your newly-found surplus time and hopefully even help you secure that next promotion.

Closer to home, many schools and institutions in Jakarta offer evening and weekend classes that will help you learn that skill you have always wanted to pick up. Mandarin, oil painting, creative writing and pasta making classes are just a sampling of what is available here.

Move it. Use that evening television time to go for walks. Sure, the Big Smoke is not exactly foot-friendly, but deep within the city’s neighborhoods and winding gangs, the roads are less-heavily mechanized and full of interesting sights and people. Walking is also a great way to spend time with your family and a fine way to meet your neighbors. In addition to walking, this evening time would also be nice for starting any fitness plan you are interested in.

Box and Eat it. Start a picnic day. Be creative and get the whole family involved. Each week, another person can select the picnic’s menu and setting. An eating blanket can be spread anywhere, from your master bedroom’s balcony to the Bogor Botanical Gardens.

As I reread the above six thoughts, I realized that they all possess a common thread. They are about paying more attention to those two things that matter most: you and the people around you.

That, to me, is not a bad trade off.

Good luck,

AG

This article was originally published in The Jakarta Post.

The Threat of the Goggle-Box

On Words

The threat of the goggle-box

By ANDREW GREENE

Jakarta – Mid election-surprise-holiday day, I sat on the foot of my bed with a mound of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese balanced between my wine-capped knees as an advertisement for something called the Baby Channel was broadcast on the screen of my Digital 1 fed moving-picture box.

I sat up straight. Surely, I thought, as a small-screen enthusiast, this development was to be to my delight.

“Finally,” I inwardly rejoiced, “the cycle was complete. At last, the time had arrived in which we have television programming to pull us wet and swaddled from the womb, propel us all through life, before finally surrendering our wide-eyed, empty-headed bodies back into mother earth’s embrace.”

Cradle to grave goggle-box. How could this possibly be wrong?

But, then I remembered hearing about a study published by the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute just a few days before. It had concluded that popular DVD’s such as Baby Einstein offer toddlers no benefits and that the babies who viewed such fare in fact comprehended fewer words than video-free tots.

Suddenly my comfort food left me cold and with bits of powdery orange-pasta drying in the corners of my mouth, I lowered the bowl.

As a parent of a soon to be ten year old, I am utterly aware of all, ok, some, of the influences children face nowadays. In our enlightened era in which Mc Donald’s is introducing healthy kid’s meals and smoking has been outlawed on the thoroughfares of Jakarta, do we really need to take a step back and introduce our children to an addiction at yet an even earlier age?

How far behind can the Cemal or Pell Mell (their misspellings, not mine) candy cigarettes of my boyhood be? Next thing you know there will be children’s Visa debit cards and Bintang Zero alcohol beer. All props for a twisted make-believe world, these are best relegated to Tim Burton’s silvery screen and out of our more-than-Technicolor lives. The buying on credit, binge drinking, and eating disorders can surely be put off until the university years.

Childhood is the time to solidify the good habits. And since today’s column is about adolescent television viewing, let us get back to that. Simply put, numerous studies have shown that watching too much television leads to, among other things, obesity and low test scores in children.
Obesity

Watching television dulls your awareness so that you do not notice messages to your brain saying that you are full. This is why it is so easy for you to mine through an entire bag of chips or a pint of Hagen Das while you are distracted by the latest madcap happenings of your favorite fictional family.

Two 2005 studies published in The Journal of Pediatrics said that children who watched too much telly were prone to fatness. R.M. Viner and T.J. Cole from the University College London found that every hour over the recommended 1.5 hours of daily television watched by five year olds raises the risk of them becoming obese by the age of 30 by seven percent.

In the other study, on the Atlantic’s modern side, Doctors Kirsten Davison, Lori Francis, and Leann Birch from the State University of New York discovered that nine and 11 year old girls who exceeded recommended guidelines of television viewing were 2.6 times more likely to be overweight than girls who watched less television.

Low Test Scores

Television in and of itself does not make us stupid. The danger is that it is such a demanding, time-devouring habit that it keeps us away from true life experiences.

According to Jim Trelease, author of The Read-Aloud Handbook, in 1990, the National Assessment of Educational Progress tested eighth-graders across the United States and found that, “The more they watched, the lower the scores.”

In 1991, other tests of young teens from more than a dozen countries showed that in math and science “Students who watched the most television had the lowest scores.”

A 2005 edition of The Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine quoted Doctor Dina Borzekowski as saying about similar tests, “Among these third graders, we saw that … those who had bedroom TV sets scored around eight points lower on math and language arts tests and seven points lower on reading tests.”

Indonesia

Though the above studies were conducted in the West, Indonesian children are not safe. They too are falling victim to the same electronic demon, watching well-above the recommended limit of 1.5 daily hours. The Children Media Development Foundation (Kidia) says, “The average Indonesian child watches between 30 and 35 hours of television per week, or 1,560 to 1,820 hours per year.”

Kidia’s Chairman, Boby Guntarto, told The Jakarta Post just over a year ago during the nation’s first “No Television Day,” “Children who watch too much television are more likely to be overweight and unhappy. It also affects brain development and learning."

It is clear that this seemingly-innocuous practice can hook and detrimentally affect us no matter where we live. Next week’s On Words column will explore some techniques that can help you and your family kick the television habit.

This article was originally published in The Jakarta Post.