�Shielding children from sex and fierceness, avoiding commercials and finding extra prison term for former activities are among the key reasons Americans live without television, according to a new book by Marina Krcmar, associate prof of communication at Wake Forest University.
"Living without the Screen" is an in-depth study of American families and individuals who choose not to watch goggle box. It will be promulgated Aug. 28 by Routledge.
Krcmar wanted to find extinct why some people for good turn off the TV, while the average American watches threesome hours of television each day.
"Non-viewers perceive television to have index," Krcmar aforementioned. "They believe it lavatory steal sentence, can affect consumer behaviour and commode influence how autonomous children are."
Krcmar interviewed 120 adults and children from 62 different households who do not look on television. Some filled kayoed a survey or completed diaries documenting how they spent their time. She visited the homes of 15 participants and conducted extensive interviews with the adults and children in the household.
Some in the study never owned a TV, others did not replace one when it broke or did not have a television due to fiscal considerations. Some owned a TV, merely kept it hidden away and now and then pulled it out to watch a movie on DVD. To allow her to make believe comparisons, Krcmar also interviewed 92 participants from 35 households wHO do watch television.
"Based on the interviews, the surveys and the time-use diaries, it appears that those who do not look on television non only resist television in order to keep sex, violence, shallow news coverage and consumerism out of their lives, but too to encourage family interaction, their children's independence and creativity, and a wise use of their time," Krcmar said.
Those with very liberal or very conservative political views are among those to the highest degree likely to say "no" to television, she aforesaid. Although more than half of the non-viewing study participants felled seam into politically opposite categories, others fell across the demographic spectrum.
"I was surprised to find that deuce large groups of non-viewers were exceedingly different in many ways, but shared commonalities regarding television," Krcmar said. For example, one of the study participants was a politically liberal, single artist in Boston. Another participant with similar views around TV was a Midwestern woman with 10 children who described herself as a button-down Christian.
A common characteristic among non-viewers was that, compared to viewers, they had "very stiff opinions not only around television only also around those issues they saw as organism associated with it such as political science and couple-interaction," Krcmar aforementioned. "In other words, they are avid and idealistic."
They all believed themselves to be unusual and broadly speaking liked being different. Not watching video was role of their family identicalness. Krcmar found the non-viewers were more engaged with family and friends than their TV viewing counterparts.
Many who did not observe TV rejected the total television industry as immoral or unethical. By rejecting the industry, they felt they gained power in their homes, Krcmar said.
Parents in the study aforementioned banning TV in their homes helped make their children more independent. Instead of the short-term amusement value of television, the children benefitted from the long-term power to nurse themselves, they said.
For children, not observance TV meant a expiration of social capital, Krcmar said. They could non join in conversations about popular TV shows. However, many of the older children interviewed had full-grown comfortable without TV and had plant other shipway to connect to peers. The book includes anecdotes about parents offering to let their children watch something on TV as a payoff and the children responding that they were non interested.
"By researching families without television, I think we learn a lot about the purpose of television receiver in the lives of American families," said Krcmar, who does not own a TV in her house. "I know this may effectual counter-intuitive, simply when we look nearly at kinsfolk interaction in the absence of TV, we see the shipway in which television has become an integral part of our lives."
Krcmar's inquiry focuses on children, adolescents and the media, and her well-nigh recent research has examined the core of violent video games on adolescents and the role of media uptake in adolescent risk-taking.
Source: Cheryl Walker
Wake Forest University
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