TV detox
Julie Bogart
We began this odyssey in earnest two years ago: unschooling. I have gone through myriad
emotions about what letting go of control looks like and how I feel about the results.
Then the following occurred:
Just last week, the TV was on in the morning again (it's on most of the
day here as TV or X Box) and I sometimes will say, "Can we take a TV break? I'm tired of
the noise." They usually oblige me, but it's never their idea. Which was fine. I have
accepted that they like TV a lot more than I do.
Well on this particular day, Jacob said, "Can we turn the TV off and just have classical
music on?" Caitrin and Liam said, "Yeah, I'm sick of TV." Since that day, we've had the TV
off almost every morning by their choice.
It's taken two years for that to happen that way. Two whole total years of non-
interference.
They still watch TV. They still love TV.
But it struck me how long it took for them to make a comment like that on their own with
no prompting from me.
This would make it appear that my goal was for them to stop watching TV. Not at all. But I
did wonder about that "TV is just one more option" thing that I thought was more
characteristic of unschooling families.
As it turns out, we had controlled TV for the first 15 years of my oldest son's life (and then
the corresponding amount in each of the younger ones) and my oldest said once, "We have
to much to catch up on to get all the jokes with our friends."
I now understand that. :)
Just thought I'd share our process since I had thought it would only take eight months for
that moment to occur. :) But nope! 24 months, almost to the day.
Julie~~off to watch some TV
emotions about what letting go of control looks like and how I feel about the results.
Then the following occurred:
Just last week, the TV was on in the morning again (it's on most of the
day here as TV or X Box) and I sometimes will say, "Can we take a TV break? I'm tired of
the noise." They usually oblige me, but it's never their idea. Which was fine. I have
accepted that they like TV a lot more than I do.
Well on this particular day, Jacob said, "Can we turn the TV off and just have classical
music on?" Caitrin and Liam said, "Yeah, I'm sick of TV." Since that day, we've had the TV
off almost every morning by their choice.
It's taken two years for that to happen that way. Two whole total years of non-
interference.
They still watch TV. They still love TV.
But it struck me how long it took for them to make a comment like that on their own with
no prompting from me.
This would make it appear that my goal was for them to stop watching TV. Not at all. But I
did wonder about that "TV is just one more option" thing that I thought was more
characteristic of unschooling families.
As it turns out, we had controlled TV for the first 15 years of my oldest son's life (and then
the corresponding amount in each of the younger ones) and my oldest said once, "We have
to much to catch up on to get all the jokes with our friends."
I now understand that. :)
Just thought I'd share our process since I had thought it would only take eight months for
that moment to occur. :) But nope! 24 months, almost to the day.
Julie~~off to watch some TV
pam sorooshian
On Jan 13, 2005, at 8:04 AM, Julie Bogart wrote:
put this - because that IS what happens, apparently, in homes where tv
has been strictly controlled - it is no longer "just another option."
People blame its compelling nature for why their kids can't seem to use
rational thought to choose what and when to watch stuff. They really
just do NOT believe that it is because they've made it such a big huge
deal to be able to watch it with a sense of leisure and abundance.
I've wanted to bring this up for a long time, but keep forgetting, and
now you've reminded me. So - thanks for the excuse to offer a little
economics lesson that I think is very very relevant. I'm going to post
it in a separate email, since it'll probably be long.
-pam
> But it struck me how long it took for them to make a comment like thatInteresting, Julie. Thanks for sharing it. And I like the way you've
> on their own with
> no prompting from me.
>
> This would make it appear that my goal was for them to stop watching
> TV. Not at all. But I
> did wonder about that "TV is just one more option" thing that I
> thought was more
> characteristic of unschooling families.
put this - because that IS what happens, apparently, in homes where tv
has been strictly controlled - it is no longer "just another option."
People blame its compelling nature for why their kids can't seem to use
rational thought to choose what and when to watch stuff. They really
just do NOT believe that it is because they've made it such a big huge
deal to be able to watch it with a sense of leisure and abundance.
I've wanted to bring this up for a long time, but keep forgetting, and
now you've reminded me. So - thanks for the excuse to offer a little
economics lesson that I think is very very relevant. I'm going to post
it in a separate email, since it'll probably be long.
-pam
pam sorooshian
Conclusion: Restricting tv-watching time increases the marginal utility
of tv watching and causes children to become extremely strongly
attracted to it and to value tv-watching above other, nonrestricted,
activities.
"Utility" is a word used by economists to mean the pleasure,
satisfaction, usefulness, or whatever other value a person gets from a
product or service. Gaining utility is the reason why a person buys a
product or engages in an activity. Just like businesses make decisions
in such a way as to maximize total profits, individuals make decisions
in such a way as to maximize their "total utility." Economists view
people as "utility-maximizing" agents. Through an economist's eyes,
we're all going through our lives making constant comparisons -
choosing minute-by-minute what to do, what to eat, what to buy, what to
wear, what to say, and everything else, and every time we choose, we do
it so as to increase our total utility as much as possible. Imagine you
are standing in an ice cream store and choosing a flavor - what an
economist sees is that your brain is rapidly going through all the
choices, figuring out how much utility you'd gain from a scoop of
strawberry versus a scoop of rocky road and so on, and then picking the
one that gives you the most utility. (Notice that utility has to be
predicted - we could be wrong in our pick, but we do our best given the
information we have. I could decide that strawberry is my pick for
today - that's the flavor that I prefer right now - the one that will
give me the most utility. And then I might discover, to my dismay, that
it doesn't live up to my expectations and I might WISH I could change
my mind. It happens. So, our choices are actually based on our
"expected" utility gains.)
Okay - there is a lot more I could say about "utility" and if you have
objections to this way of seeing the world, we can talk about them.
But, I'll leave that for later, and, after introducing one more idea,
I'll move on to what this has to do with children and
television-watching restrictions.
First, imagine you're in that ice cream shop and you've bought that
strawberry cone because it had a high utility value to you. You eat it
up and it is delicious and you compute the expected utility of ANOTHER
ice cream cone and decide to buy one. You eat it. YUM. Now you compute
the expected utility of a third ice cream cone. So - what do you think?
Is the 2nd ice cream cone going to give you as much ADDITIONAL utility
as the 1st did? Will the 3rd one be expected to add as much to your
total utility as the 1st or 2nd ones did? What's going to happen as you
eat more ice cream cones? After you've had one, the expected utility of
the next is lower than the expected utility was for the first. And
after you've had two, the expected utility for the third will be lower
than the expected utility for the second one was. They still might have
value to you, they still give you utility, just not as much extra
utility.
The "extra" utility you get from having "one more" of something, is
called "marginal utility."
And - marginal utility goes DOWN as you have more and more of the same
thing.
EVEN if you chose different flavors for each of your ice cream cones,
you'd have chosen the highest-utility flavor first and so subsequent
cones would provide lower and lower marginal utility.
This way of looking at choices is applicable to almost everything we do.
What's your favorite thing to do? Watch movies? Read a book? Garden? Go
to Disneyland? Why don't you just do THAT all the time and nothing
else? I mean - if it is your favorite, then doesn't IT give you higher
utility than anything else. Why do you ever stop doing it?
The answer is that as you do more and more of something, the marginal
utility of doing even more of it, goes down. As its marginal utility
goes down, other things start to look better and better.
But - when you restrict an activity, you keep the person at the point
where the marginal utility is really high.
When you only allow a limited amount of tv, then the marginal utility
of a little more tv is high and EVERY other option looks like a poor
one, comparatively. Watching more tv becomes the focus of the person's
thinking, since the marginal utility is so high. Relax the constraints
and, after a period of adjustment and experimentation to determine
accurate marginal utilities, the focus on tv will disappear and it will
become just another option.
of tv watching and causes children to become extremely strongly
attracted to it and to value tv-watching above other, nonrestricted,
activities.
"Utility" is a word used by economists to mean the pleasure,
satisfaction, usefulness, or whatever other value a person gets from a
product or service. Gaining utility is the reason why a person buys a
product or engages in an activity. Just like businesses make decisions
in such a way as to maximize total profits, individuals make decisions
in such a way as to maximize their "total utility." Economists view
people as "utility-maximizing" agents. Through an economist's eyes,
we're all going through our lives making constant comparisons -
choosing minute-by-minute what to do, what to eat, what to buy, what to
wear, what to say, and everything else, and every time we choose, we do
it so as to increase our total utility as much as possible. Imagine you
are standing in an ice cream store and choosing a flavor - what an
economist sees is that your brain is rapidly going through all the
choices, figuring out how much utility you'd gain from a scoop of
strawberry versus a scoop of rocky road and so on, and then picking the
one that gives you the most utility. (Notice that utility has to be
predicted - we could be wrong in our pick, but we do our best given the
information we have. I could decide that strawberry is my pick for
today - that's the flavor that I prefer right now - the one that will
give me the most utility. And then I might discover, to my dismay, that
it doesn't live up to my expectations and I might WISH I could change
my mind. It happens. So, our choices are actually based on our
"expected" utility gains.)
Okay - there is a lot more I could say about "utility" and if you have
objections to this way of seeing the world, we can talk about them.
But, I'll leave that for later, and, after introducing one more idea,
I'll move on to what this has to do with children and
television-watching restrictions.
First, imagine you're in that ice cream shop and you've bought that
strawberry cone because it had a high utility value to you. You eat it
up and it is delicious and you compute the expected utility of ANOTHER
ice cream cone and decide to buy one. You eat it. YUM. Now you compute
the expected utility of a third ice cream cone. So - what do you think?
Is the 2nd ice cream cone going to give you as much ADDITIONAL utility
as the 1st did? Will the 3rd one be expected to add as much to your
total utility as the 1st or 2nd ones did? What's going to happen as you
eat more ice cream cones? After you've had one, the expected utility of
the next is lower than the expected utility was for the first. And
after you've had two, the expected utility for the third will be lower
than the expected utility for the second one was. They still might have
value to you, they still give you utility, just not as much extra
utility.
The "extra" utility you get from having "one more" of something, is
called "marginal utility."
And - marginal utility goes DOWN as you have more and more of the same
thing.
EVEN if you chose different flavors for each of your ice cream cones,
you'd have chosen the highest-utility flavor first and so subsequent
cones would provide lower and lower marginal utility.
This way of looking at choices is applicable to almost everything we do.
What's your favorite thing to do? Watch movies? Read a book? Garden? Go
to Disneyland? Why don't you just do THAT all the time and nothing
else? I mean - if it is your favorite, then doesn't IT give you higher
utility than anything else. Why do you ever stop doing it?
The answer is that as you do more and more of something, the marginal
utility of doing even more of it, goes down. As its marginal utility
goes down, other things start to look better and better.
But - when you restrict an activity, you keep the person at the point
where the marginal utility is really high.
When you only allow a limited amount of tv, then the marginal utility
of a little more tv is high and EVERY other option looks like a poor
one, comparatively. Watching more tv becomes the focus of the person's
thinking, since the marginal utility is so high. Relax the constraints
and, after a period of adjustment and experimentation to determine
accurate marginal utilities, the focus on tv will disappear and it will
become just another option.
Angela S
Pam,
That was an awesome explanation. The best I've seen yet. And that's why
those girl scout cookies are so good; they are only available for a short
time. It makes their marginal utility go up. :-)
Angela
game-enthusiast@...
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
That was an awesome explanation. The best I've seen yet. And that's why
those girl scout cookies are so good; they are only available for a short
time. It makes their marginal utility go up. :-)
Angela
game-enthusiast@...
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Nichole Fausey-Khosraviani
----- Original Message -----
From: Angela S
And that's why
those girl scout cookies are so good; they are only available for a short
time. It makes their marginal utility go up. :-)
Angela
*********************************************
If you bought 100 boxes and put them in a deep freezer, they'd lose their appeal after a while. Just like when I finally let go of candy restrictions. It wasn't that I had them, it was that I stopped buying my daughter (7) candy whenever she asked. I said she could buy it with her allowance. Then it turned into something she was spending her money on, usually the first thing. So, I decided that wasn't such a good idea and the next time we went to Sam's, I told her she could pick out anything she wanted. She chose 5 lbs of Mike & Ikes and 3 lbs of Laffie Taffie. She ate a lot of it at first, but she also shared a lot of it with her friends. We bought that stuff back in late September. There's still a bunch of it in the pantry. At Halloween, she could care less how much candy she got and it sat around for a long time untouched. When things are readily available, in all areas of life, they are not coveted.
:o)
Nichole
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Kristina Kahney
I love this so much and it just makes so much sense. Thank you for taking the time to write it out. Off to print out for my hubby....
Kristina
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Kristina
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Kristina Kahney
Angela S <game-enthusiast@...> wrote:
That was an awesome explanation. The best I've seen yet. And that's why
those girl scout cookies are so good; they are only available for a short
time. It makes their marginal utility go up. :-)
I'ts also like Blue Bell ice cream (here in the south), they only have certain flavors available at certain times and we all wait and wait for our favorite flavors to come out again. It wouldn't be nearly as good if I could get carmel sundae crunch year round and I also wouldn't eat it like a maniac, buying gallons at a time, either. I can *so* see now how it is the same with tv watching and other choices we feel we need to restrict for the "benefit" of our children (or so we're taught to believe). Such an AH HA! moment for me!
Kristina
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
That was an awesome explanation. The best I've seen yet. And that's why
those girl scout cookies are so good; they are only available for a short
time. It makes their marginal utility go up. :-)
I'ts also like Blue Bell ice cream (here in the south), they only have certain flavors available at certain times and we all wait and wait for our favorite flavors to come out again. It wouldn't be nearly as good if I could get carmel sundae crunch year round and I also wouldn't eat it like a maniac, buying gallons at a time, either. I can *so* see now how it is the same with tv watching and other choices we feel we need to restrict for the "benefit" of our children (or so we're taught to believe). Such an AH HA! moment for me!
Kristina
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Angela S
Nichole wrote:
If you bought 100 boxes and put them in a deep freezer, they'd lose their
appeal after a while.
--
I know they would. It is smart of the girl scouts to only sell them once a
year because it keeps people wanting them though.
--
Nichole wrote:
Just like when I finally let go of candy restrictions.
--
My kids don't have restrictions on any foods either. Over all, they are
much better at making food choices than I am.
Angela
game-enthusiast@...
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
If you bought 100 boxes and put them in a deep freezer, they'd lose their
appeal after a while.
--
I know they would. It is smart of the girl scouts to only sell them once a
year because it keeps people wanting them though.
--
Nichole wrote:
Just like when I finally let go of candy restrictions.
--
My kids don't have restrictions on any foods either. Over all, they are
much better at making food choices than I am.
Angela
game-enthusiast@...
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Julie
LOL! That was great!!!
Julie
--- In [email protected], "Angela S" <game-
enthusiast@a...> wrote:
Julie
--- In [email protected], "Angela S" <game-
enthusiast@a...> wrote:
> Pam,that's why
>
> That was an awesome explanation. The best I've seen yet. And
> those girl scout cookies are so good; they are only available fora short
> time. It makes their marginal utility go up. :-)
>
>
>
> Angela
>
> game-enthusiast@a...
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Schuyler Waynforth
Fantastic essay! Marginal utility is marginal value in biology. The
measure for value is based on fertility, but it was clearly swiped
from economics.
Thanks for posting that.
Schuyler
--- In [email protected], pam sorooshian
<pamsoroosh@m...> wrote:
measure for value is based on fertility, but it was clearly swiped
from economics.
Thanks for posting that.
Schuyler
--- In [email protected], pam sorooshian
<pamsoroosh@m...> wrote:
> Conclusion: Restricting tv-watching time increases the marginalutility
> of tv watching and causes children to become extremely stronglynonrestricted,
> attracted to it and to value tv-watching above other,
> activities.