Dethroning Television as King of Our Homes

It wasn't so long ago that people in many countries were spending as much as a quarter of their waking lives in front of the ubiquitous "idiot box"; we were idiots watching a box filled with idiocy; eating dinner with it, going to sleep with it, waking up to it. Such a lovely dilemma...All the jokes about "couch potatoes" and "idiot boxes" disguised a grave Truth, one that few people were willing to acknowledge or even say aloud: our collective intimacy with television had grown into a full fledged psychological dependency, the damaging effects of which were becoming painfully aware on many levels as we were all being "dumbed down".
Things changed drastically by the turn into this century. The allure of being seduced by television, which many feared as invulnerable, had been abruptly compromised. Mainstream support for TV Turnoff Week became widespread, and a number of demographics TV viewership had actually fallen. At the same time, however, the amount of time spent staring at computer screens, playing usually violent video games, and using cell phones rose dramatically.TV may have been 'dethroned' as it were as the King of our homes, but that throne has swiftly found new tenants. Today the electronic environment dominates our work places and our homes, and, for many, any connections with nature and even local community has been all but severed and most of us sit alone and in isolation...
An old quote from Huxley seems to fit this situation, "Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures.
A society, most of whose members spent a great deal of time not on the spot, not here and now in the calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sports and soap operas, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those who would manipulate and control it."
Thoughts during the separation from TV anxiety continue...