I'm positive if you put it away for six months totally and then try to watch again that you will find yourself wondering why you ever watched it in the first place.

Newton Minow called TV "a vast wasteland" on May 9, 1961.. As someone who was watching TV at that time as a pre teen I can assure you it has not improved one iota in the intervening years.

CNN is pure right wing propaganda dressed up to appear "fair and balanced", the other "news" networks are even worse.

It's no mere coincidence that watchers of Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert are better informed of world events than those who watch the "news" networks.. Those who get their news through a wide variety of sources on the web are even better informed than Comedy Central viewers.

I'll leave you with the immortal words of that towering genius, Frank Zappa..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPJHRwyZ9y4

I'm The Slime

by Frank Zappa

I am gross and perverted

I'm obsessed 'n deranged

I have existed for years

But very little had changed

I am the tool of the Government

And industry too

For I am destined to rule

And regulate you

I may be vile and pernicious

But you can't look away

I make you think I'm delicious

With the stuff that I say

I am the best you can get

Have you guessed me yet?

I am the slime oozin' out

From your TV set

You will obey me while I lead you

And eat the garbage that I feed you

Until the day that we don't need you

Don't got for help...no one will heed you

Your mind is totally controlled

It has been stuffed into my mold

And you will do as you are told

Until the rights to you are sold

That's right, folks..

Don't touch that dial

Well, I am the slime from your video

Oozin' along on your livin'room floor

I am the slime from your video

Can't stop the slime, people, lookit me go

I was also raised on the tv, but hey, I turned out alright.

And we also have a 5 month old and a 50? 52?--I'm not sure on the specific size, but it is bigger than a small country--inch tv that dominates our living room. But the damn thing doesn't come on unless the baby is asleep for the night. And some nights we're just too damn tired to turn the thing on anyway. I mean, once you're too tired to stay up for Jon Stewart (and, honestly, it just doesn't feel the same watching recorded Daily Show, it just doesn't), what else is out there? Oh wait, I forgot the new season of Top Chef just started, damn.

But I'm with you--once I saw kiddo's round nogin creaking to get a glance at the oversized tv, I said no more.

Anyway, my solution? NPR. Granted, it is totally bourgeois talk, but hey, you can get your fill of news and events and baby gets exposure to language. I listen to Forum and All Things Considered and then convert over to some actual music, lest I be subjected to Fresh Air. Honestly, I don't know what's worse--the baby crying or Terry Gross and her smug sense of self importance.

Regarding no television before 2 years, consider the following excerpt from http://www.limitv.org.

"Doctors sometimes refer to the enormous brain development that occurs in the first few years of life as a 'wiring' of the brain, i.e., making connections between the billions of neurons with which we are born. TV watching in these crucial early years may affect this wiring. That is, if the hours of TV watched exceed a certain level, a child's brain may be wired to respond more to the TV environment (rapid changes of sounds and images) than the natural environment. That level has not yet been determined, but since the AAP recommends no TV watching for the first two years of life, we could assume the level is quite low. It is for this reason as well that LimiTV recommends little-to-no TV through age 4."

Elsewhere limitv.org notes that the flickering images of television contributes to neurological developmental problems in children under 5 years of age.

I believe that the overall effect of television on cognitive development is wildly out of proportion to exposure, and that the effort to separate the wheat from the chaff is not worth its sustained assault on your intellectual defenses: brief exposure to television depresses cognitive ability in every measurable category.

I have been TV-free for years. Getting rid of the TV certainly helped when I was pursing a doctorate in mathematics.

Since my partner and I were both working full time, in graduate school and remodeling a house when our child was born, we would have had to send our baby to day-care to make time for television. I agree with my distant cousin Philo Farnsworth (the inventor of the electronic television), there is too little of value shown on a television to allow one into my home. You are so right to value the bonding time with your child over your former boob-tube habit.

Congratulations to Kim Brooks, you are doing right by your son!

According to the Feb 2002 cover story for Scientific American "Television Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor":

"As one might expect, people who were watching TV when we beeped them reported feeling relaxed and passive. The EEG studies similarly show less mental stimulation, as measured by alpha brain-wave production, during viewing than during reading..."

Note, it is adults the article refers to. For adults there are 5 basic brainwave states:

Delta: sleep

Theta: Light sleep

Alpha: daydreaming, TV watching

Beta: Everyday alertness, talking, listening, reading, etc.

Gamma: Thinking Hard, playing a musical instrument, etc.

So when an adults starts to watch TV, their brainwaves go from a Beta brainwave state to a slower Alpha brainwave state.

How could this be?

Again according to the Scientific American article:

"In 1986 Byron Reeves of Stanford University, Esther Thorson of the University of Missouri and their colleagues began to study whether the simple formal features of television--cuts, edits, zooms, pans, sudden noises--activate the orienting response, thereby keeping attention on the screen. By watching how brain waves were affected by formal features, the researchers concluded that these stylistic tricks can indeed trigger involuntary responses and "derive their attentional value through the evolutionary significance of detecting movement.... It is the form, not the content, of television that is unique.""

This is something Al Gore discusses in his book "Assault on Reason":

"An important explanation for why we spend so much time motionless in front of the screen is that television constantly triggers the "orienting response" in our brains."

Ah, but what about young children, do they have the same reaction?

http://www.pedsforparents.com/articles/2758.shtml

According to Dr. Christakis

"One of the central ways that television succeeds in maintaining the attention of children is through the "orienting response."

But what about babies & toddlers, same reaction?

We know that toddlers and baby have much slower brainwaves while awake than adults. Which means that someone must have published brainwaves studies of babies and toddlers. Why not do a similar study but also looking at the brain wave effects of babies and toddlers watching TV (both fast and slow formal features).

Until such a study is done and disseminated to the general public, parents should assume that (as with adults) TV slows down the brainwaves of their children.

Personally, I think that having the brain waves of young children artificially slowed down for 30 min and up by TV and video everyday while their brains are still developing is a really bad idea. Others may disagree.

But, parents should be able to make an informed decision. And the only way for this to happen is if the scientific community does the research and disseminates the results.

Perhaps these studies have already been done, but hardly anyone knows about them.