um…i may be way off here…but this thread was not started as a review of the tuvia singer site…so I’m going to respond to the OP.
setting the gospel aside…and getting back to TV. let’s set aside the issues of prizus, nivul peh, wrong hashkafah, issurei mideoraisa, and bitul torah…lets look at this from a purely practical standpoint. let’s set aside all the quibbling. whatever you’re watching on TV, you are taking time out of your day to watch whatever it is you’re watching. let’s give a conservative estimate…i would say that it is reasonable to assume that a person would watch 2 hours of TV a day at minimum. think about this…assuming you have a 9-5 job. i think that’s a reasonable assumption. so you wake up at 6:30, daven at 7:00 eat breakfast from 7:45 to 8:00-15, then travel to work. you get back from work at around 6:00-30.
now here is where it gets interesting. assuming you have a family, you have to eat dinner with them. so lets say when you get home at 6:30 your wife is preparing dinner in the kitchen. are you going to watch TV now? you have some time…will you abandon your wife for a TV when you haven’t seen each other all day? if yes, you have problems. if no…let’s move on. so you spend a half an hour to 45 minutes with your wife in the kitchen either helping her or keeping her company while she prepares dinner. it is now 7:15. your kids come down for dinner. dinner lasts for 45 minutes. OK…8:00. dinner is over. your wife is now clearing up. this process takes 15 minutes. do you leave her? or help her? leave her? you have problems…help her or keep her company? good job. let’s move on. 8:15.
now it’s about time your small children go to bed. it’s getting late…and putting them to bed is a rather long and tedious process. can’t watch TV now…time to help the kids into bed! so you move about from room to room, helping your kids change, telling them bedtime stories, singing to them, sitting with the kid who is afraid of the dark…it is now 9:15. you see what’s happening here? if yes, you’re good. if not…keep reading.
now that the younger kids are in bed, the older kids have run of the house. your 14 year old daughter is breaking her head on her historiah homework, and calls you over for help. so you sit down, and being the good father you are you help her with her homework, and ask her about her day. it is now 10:00.
you wander off to get the older kids to sleep. 10:15. the day is over, now it’s only you and your wife awake. you have to be asleep at 11:00 to be up and refreshed for the next day. 2 hours of TV? really?!? WHERE?!? notice i left learning COMPLETELY out of the equation…WHERE DO YOU FIND THE TIME?!?
let’s go from a different tack. suppose you aren’t a father, or you have only 1 low maintenance kid. i’ll explain to you my experience. i didnt have a TV for most of my childhood. but in truth, when you’re in elementary school, as a kid you have plenty of free time anyway, so watching TV is not that much of an issue. (purely from a practical standpoint, it is even worse for an elementary school student to be watching TV, i call on any Toras Emes Kaminetz students to back me up on this) then you go to highschool. regents…mishmar…homework…where do you have the time?!? you don’t. fast forward to when you leave yeshiva for good. i’m there right now.
while i was in high school, i got REALLY hooked on movies. i am a natural born multitasker, to the point that unless i am doing 3 things at once…i am genuinely bored. in 11th grade, i had 2 TeraBytes of movies stored on my computer. that’s a little more than 2000 movies. i used to watch movies when i did everything. if i was doing homework…a movie was on one of my screen. fast forward back to the present. i am now out of yeshiva. i continued watching movies just to pass the time. i didnt have a job at the time. then i got one, and still i watched movies. i never innovated, i never had a motivation to learn more about my profession, because to do that would be to take my attention off teh movie, and instead have to devote my complete attention to one thing–a book, or an adobe program.
october of this year i accepted a deal with my chavrusa where he stopped smoking and i stopped watching movies. my productivity increased, and i learned way more about my profession. i became involved in many projects, and i learned much about graphic design. fast forward to june 22. i lost my high speed internet and am now on dial up. i now know how to do flash animations. you see what i’m getting at? if yes, you’re good. if not…well…i can’t help you.