TV turn off week

Sound Vision invites you to turn off your TV during the TV Tun Off Week every year. We have three lists of alternate activities which you can adopt during this week and keep up with it for the rest of the year.

Sponsored by TV Turn Off Network in Washington, D.C., the week encourages viewers to turn off the set for one week and "replace TV time with activities that lead to a more literate, productive life and engaged citizenship." American Academy of Pediatrics has become one of the latest supporter of this movement.

The Purpose:

The purpose of the Turnoff is to encourage a healthy break from TV and focus on activities that are more academically, socially and physically rewarding.

Statistics about television in this country are alarming. The television is on for 6 hours and 47 minutes each day in the average household. Two-thirds of Americans regularly eat dinner while watching TV.

Children spend an average of 4 hours daily watching TV, while studies estimate only 39 minutes each week are spent in meaningful conversation with parents.

Good TV, Bad TV:

Television is the most important means of communication today. Television is a great tool which could be used in a good way or bad way. Television has some great uses - educational, entertaining and informing. Like anything else, it's all in how you use it. Television is a good thing, but the world would be better without so much of it.

Groups like TV-Free America are getting people to do something about this seductive electronic box. Each week in April TVFA sponsors a National TV-Turnoff Week. The event, launched in 1995, has a growing list of supporters, including the American Medical Association.

The key is to turn the set off for at least one full week, including public TV programs and VCR movies too. Everything! Cold Turkey for one week. One or two days is not enough to get the true experience of re-discovering life without TV.