subject: Can You Live Without Tv In Your Home [print this page] Recently in the United States, we went through an elaborate process to switch from analog to digital signals for broadcast television. This was a government mandate that will free up many frequencies for things like wireless 3G networking and thus put those frequencies to better use. Still, the switch has left many viewers in a quandary --- older but still functional television sets cannot show the new digital broadcast signals, so digital to analog converter boxes have been made available for broadcast-, as opposed to satellite- or cable-, television viewers.
Since the government is covering the cost of purchasing up to two converter boxes per household, economics should not prevent anyone from continuing to watch their favorite shows, just a certain lack of technical prowess in properly connecting the box to the TV and setting up a functioning over-the-air digital system. And that can be overcome by bribing a local thirteen-year-old with some pizza or something.
The situation raises some questions, though. What if the government were a bit more heavy-handed in this matter? Or what if there are no technically adept adolescents about who can properly set up your gadgetry? Life without TV would then become a real possibility for a certain segment of the population.
Can you live without TV? The answer depends on what role TV plays in your life. For some, TV is a lifeline to the outside world that they can only experience by proxy. Obviously if you can never or only seldom leave your home, and TV acts as your window to the world, cutting it out could be detrimental to your mental health. For others, however, television serves as background noise that accompanies their life, a need just as easily fulfilled with music or talk-radio.
Today, if you have a modicum of Internet savvy, many of television's other functions like gathering news, finding out about the weather, keeping up with sports and entertainment can be done via computer instead. But since only the medium of delivery is changing, not the content, couldn't we still call it "TV", albeit "online-TV"?
Perhaps abandoning TV can help some people improve their lives. After all, TV is for many a monolithic usurper of time. If that time were to be freed up, what would you do with it? Some might spend more time outdoors pursuing activities like gardening or bicycling. It could be conceived that families without TV would pay more attention to one another. They might decide to play board games, cook dinners, rejuvenate their barren back yards, and stroll the neighborhood to relieve the utter boredom that the lacuna left behind by removing TV from their lives would cause.
Perhaps chaos would reign as a result. Tables would fall from the sky and the fabric of society would be torn apart as a child tears apart dinner napkins.
Seriously though, life without TV will not be any better or worse than people choose to make it with TV. Priorities are already set. Yes, you can live without TV and, with the switch to digital, some people are actually choosing to do so, allowing their aging analog sets to become relics of a bygone age.
Does not having a television make a difference? That is doubtful. People who are inclined to get out and grow things, do things, see things, and play and read, already do get out and grow things and play and read. Just because they have access to TV does not mean they are chained to it. Such people are in control of their lives and in control of their TV. They turn it off when there are better things to do.
Can you live without TV? Yes you can. It is your choice. Many others around the world subsist without TV and appear to suffer no detrimental effect. If they can do it, so can you.
