Personally I haven't had a television since 2004. And even that was a portable black and white TV with a screen smaller than the surface of an iPad mini. Since then I have never felt the need to get another TV. On the contrary, I've often felt annoyed by the presence of TVs. Some people (and bars) leave their TVs on all the time. It's often hard to not look, even when no one is really paying attention to TVs. Here are some great financial and other reasons to ditch your TV.
How it saves money
- Save electricity. Duh.
- Cable or satellite bills. Another obvious one.
- No more additional expenses. If you don't own a TV you will not hire DVDs or Blue-rays discs, you will not feel the need to buy a Blu-ray player. And you will probably not buy video consoles and accompanying games either
- Advertising is one of the main culprits of people buying things they don't need. Ditching your TV is a great way to reduce incentives to buy useless junk.
- Besides advertising television is also a common way to show lives of people who have way more than you (or anyone you know) have. Avoiding TV also helps you avoiding guilt about the lack of glamour.
- You won't just sit in front of your TV munching on snacks.
Alternatives
Even now, in the age of internet, people in the US spend almost 5 hours a day watching TV. That's a lot of time. Selling your TV or putting it in the basement will give you a lot more time for other things. Such as spending time with friends, cooking nice meals, gardening or even dumpster diving. Of course you can also still find a lot of things to watch on the internet. But you're more likely to only watch what you actually want to watch and you will avoid a lot of the brainwashing and advertising.
How to stop watching tv?
If you think it's too drastic to ditch your television already it can be a good idea to leave your TV turned off for one week. If that works well you're ready for one month without it, which will probably give you enough confidence to make the final step and get rid of your set altogether. You can give it to charity or sell it for some money on craigslist or your local internet marketplace.
More information
- Social aspects of television on Wikipedia
- http://www.thesimpledollar.com/ten-financial-reasons-to-turn-off-your-te...
- http://www.theminimalists.com/tv/
- http://manvsdebt.com/ditch-the-television/
- http://www.reddit.com/r/antitelevision/
Main image available under a Creative Commons license, see also the corresponding blog post about Mexico's presidential elections, found through freepictures.cc..
The following image was shamelessly taken from Forced Development's post about Dan Ross Buettner's set of TV pictures:
This series, entitled A Vast Wasteland (a phrase coined by the FCC
chairman, Newton N. Minow, in 1961) is inspired by a personal
awakening to the alienating and time-consuming nature of television.
The images act as visual representations of television's power to
drain the emotion and vigor of those willing to submit to it.
