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We had a Family Home Evening consisting of a lesson derived from Elder Ballard’s talk about the Effects of Televeision. The media’s influence in our lives become more and more damaging every day. You can read his general conference talk from nearly 20 years ago (available on the LDS Gospel Library website) and see how bad it was then and how exponentially worst it is today: M. Russell Ballard, “The Effects of Television,” Ensign, May 1989, 78.

Here are a few excerpts from Elder Ballard’s talk that I found interesting:

Allow me to share highlights of some alarming findings from research studies conducted over the past eight to ten years on the effects of television when watched more than two hours a day without the careful selection of programs.

1. Before television, children played together more often, played outdoors more, spent more time being creative and inventive, and read more. Parents and children spent more time together, talked together more, shared more joint projects and chores, and ate more meals together. (See Ellen B. De Franco, TV On-Off: Better Family Use of Television, Santa Monica, Calif., Goodyear Publishing Co., 1980, pp. 5-6.)

2. Television is psychologically addictive. (Ibid., p. 4.)

3. Television is a physically passive activity and generally discourages creative play. It can encourage a certain kind of passivity which leads to a “show me or entertain me” orientation by children. (See Television and Behavior, Rockville, Md.: National Institute of Mental Health, 1987, pp. 45-46.)

4. Television tends to overpower and desensitize a child’s sense of sympathy for suffering. (See Kate Moody, Growing Up on Television: The TV Effect-A Report to Parents, New York: Times Books, 1980, pp. 91-92.)

5. Some children lose the ability to learn from reality because life’s experiences are more complicated than those seen on the screen. Teachers and parents, therefore, suffer by comparison when they cannot solve problems in thirty to sixty minutes. (See Ben Logan and Kate Moody, eds., Television Awareness Training: The Viewer’s Guide for Family and Community, Nashville: Abingdon, 1979, p. 43.)

Research data indicate that families that limit television viewing to a maximum of two hours a day of carefully selected programs may see the following significant changes in family relationships:

1. Value setting will be taught and reinforced by the family. Families will learn how to establish values and how to reason together.

2. Relationships between parents and youth will increase in families.

3. Homework will be completed with less pressure of time.

4. Personal conversations will increase substantially.

5. Children’s imaginations will come back to life.

6. Each family member will become a discriminating selector and evaluator of programs.

7. Parents can become family leaders again.

8. Good reading habits may be substituted for television viewing.

I personally do not advocate the watching of television, especially if you really want to live self-sufficiently. There is some good associated with it such as the BYU-TV station. However, nearly every DVD movie we have in our home we had edited for content through companies like Family Edited Movies.