Parents Will Watch More TV than their Teenagers

In a just-completed study involving the use of dispersed cell phones with specialized signal-gathering electronics, Integrated Media Measurement, Inc (IMMI) determined that parents of teenagers will spend the rest of this year watching more television (including DVDs) than their children.

The data used to compile the study is considered highly accurate because it monitored actual daily behavior on the spot rather than relying on statements made from memory or heavy reliance on computer-generated models used to project behavior.

In 2007, female parents age 45-54 will spend 47.6 days watching television. Those who are 35-44 will watch television for 38.3 days.

As for fathers, those 45-54 will spend 40.2 days watching television, and those 35-44 will spend 33.9 days sitting before the screen.

Their teenage children from 13-17 will spend 33.35 days watching television.

The study includes going to the movies as part of "watching television" as well.

There has been concern over the growing presence of television in the lives of Americans ever since the medium started taking a strong hold in the early 1950s.

Not too long ago the famous American science fiction author Ray Bradbury stated unequivocally that the theme of his award-winning futuristic novel from 1951, Fahrenheit 451 (which is the temperature at which books burn), was not warning about a future of Nazi-like oppression in America, as has usually been thought even by literature professors. Instead, says the book's author, the underlying theme of the work is the frightening dumbing-down effect that watching television rather than reading can have on people.

The novel's then-futuristic setting was probably around the time in which we now live.

The cinema does not always fare all that much better in sentiments of people who consider themselves to be among the intelligentsia. This journalist has one former friend who is a member of MENSA who insists that movies are only made for the less intelligent people of the world, who could not grasp the same concept or story if it were written in a book instead of shown in pictures.