Guide to Giving Up Television: How to Give Up TV for Good

You've decided that you want to give up television for good. You're watching the tube too much, and you don't seem to do anything else. Your friends never see you out anymore, because you're watching reruns of Law and Order in 8 hour stretches. Your family considers you obsessed, and you know it's time to give up watching television. Watching television can have many bad effects. There are many reasons why someone should consider giving up television. One reason is that you can damage your eyes by sitting too close to the TV. Many television watchers tend to sit less than the guideline six feet from the television screen. This effect might not be realized if you only watch TV once in a while, but if you're obsessed, the damages will occur sooner.

A second reason to stop watching television is that you are losing your friends. If you always opt to watch TV instead of go out on the weekends and spend time with them, you will lose them eventually. Good friends are hard to find!

Third, your family may no longer be willing to tolerate your television obsession. If you neglect household chores and are no longer involved in family events, your family may decide that your loner rebellious phase needs to come to an end.

Maybe your grades are suffering at school. Instead of doing your homework, you're watching television. Even if it is the discovery learning channel, you're still neglecting your school responsibilities.

You may come to see the world through the eyes of television, instead of through reality. You may think it's normal for people to go on killing sprees, or normal for all families to be happy all of the time. You won't learn how to interact with others and form teams and friendships.

You could become depressed. Watching lots of TV promotes your being a loner. You aren't making friends and socializing. You'll soon come to realize this sense of loneliness, and coupled with a lack of human interaction and touching, you may become depressed.

So how are you going to go about giving up television for good? There are a few different ways to go about it.

1. Quit cold turkey. If you're going to do this, you need to immediately find something else to fill your time and offer the same benefits that television did. Some might say that you could just start playing around on the internet, but this is going to have many of the same negative effects that television has.

Instead, try a new hobby. My hobby is writing. I write for associated content and another online website. This takes all of my free time, and I also gain enjoyment from it when I spend time on the internet researching articles. I also learn new things while I am writing.

If this doesn't work, try joining a team sport. Pick up baseball or basketball or soccer. The practices and games will take up a good bit of time, and you'll find you don't have much time left for watching television.

To make sure you are able to achieve your goal of quitting watching television cold turkey, enlist a friend to call if you get the urge to watch television. The friend will come over and get you involved in something else.

2. Try a gradual approach. Gradually watch less and less television each week. Keep a log, and list the time you spend watching television each day. At the end of the week, see how many hours you spend. If it's 20, try watching 15 the next week, and ten the next week and so on until you reach zero.

You may find that you watch the most during certain times. To help this, find things to fill your time during the times that you used to watch television. This should help to control your urges to watch.

3. Find other activities. If you watch ten hours of TV per week, find ten hours worth of other activities to add to your weekly schedule. This will help you eliminate the possibility of watching because you will have other things to do during this time. Join a chess club, join a group that plays weekly poker or trivia, or join a group that does ghost hunting. Try anything to get you focused on something other than television.

4. Make new friends. Find a new best friend to fill your time. You might have been watching television because you were lonely. If you have someone to do things with, you'll find you don't have the need to fill your time watching television.

5. Find a time consuming new hobby. Try something that will give you the same benefits you saw from television. If you watched television to feel connected, find a hobby that makes you feel the same way, like karaoke. If you watched television to be alone, find a hobby that offers this like model airplane building or meditating.