Now don't get me wrong, I love television, but during the past few weeks I've been trying to take a hard look at my habits. I'm a 22 year old unemployed college student, so obviously I've been doing a lot of putzing around, but I realize a lot of my time is consumed by television.

I love reading, but I find myself often turning on the television with the intention to watch for an hour and then turn it off and start reading, but I get caught up in it and then I just find it hard to turn it off.

I don't want a lot of reality tv or anything, but I don't watch really educational stuff. Right now I can't get myself to turn off the movie Shutter Island even though I've seen it before! There's a book I've been excited to read for months sitting next to me.

I think it's because continuing to watch tv is just easier. It's passive and I'm already doing it.

So anyways, while I don't believe tv is inherently bad I definitely watch too much of it. I think there are some things my time could be better spent on. Ideally I could be spending my time exercising, reading, playing guitar, writing, sketching or studying. When school starts again my time is going to be precious, so I may as well start cutting back now.

Have any of you tried to cut back on your television watching time before?

My family has always been really tv friendly. We've always had cable and movies. My mom never really tried to limit our time watching tv, although as kids we usually could find other things to do. Now I find it's always on, even if I'm not paying much attention to it.

I used to watch A LOT of television but a few months ago my TV broke. Iīm a student living in Spain while doing my master and my boyfriend is doing his phd, we both quit our jobs and came here so our budget is tight and canīt afford to get it fixed. Well in this time with no TV Iīve discovered how much timed I consumed in front of it, now I read more, take more walks and have more conversations with my boyfriend. Donīt get me wrong, if I could I would have a TV, but would be more careful of the time spent watching it!

I stopped watching TV about 6 years ago when I moved to my current home, because when I first moved I had issues getting both cable and satellite. Cable was problematic since the wires in my house are ancient and would have needed to be replaced...and I have too many trees for good satellite reception, unless I install a high "tower" thingy. Because both options were a pain, I just didn't bother with TV for a little while. Initially, I didn't miss it, because I was so busy unpacking and getting organized. And, once you go without it for a while, you just get used to not having it.

About a year ago, I finally broke down and had cable installed for one TV in the basement, so my son can watch his football when he comes home (the things we do for our kids!). I rarely go down in the basement, although I will go down and watch the TV if there's something really "special" on, such as the Olympics. Otherwise, I never bother. I don't miss it at all.

I never had cable until I got married. I lived for 12yrs on my own with a little tv box that had 5-6 channels. I did watch it but obviously not a lot because not a lot was on. But once we got married hubby had to have his big flat screen with all the bells and whistles... and I got sucked in to Bravo tv. I'm a total junky. Can't live without it, well I know I CAN but if it's there I watch it. It's terrible.

I grew up without TV until age 14 and never really developed the habit. I enjoy reading more because I can process the information at my own pace. (TV is often too fast for me.) So for me it's a non-issue. If anything, I've had to FORCE myself to watch TV on occasion so I would have some idea of the flavour du jour.

F.

I've gone through periods with and without tv. I was excited to have the option of cable when I moved here from the boonies, but after a year they jacked my bill up so I got mad and canceled it. It's working out very well for me, I moved the tv into the spare room which I couldn't do before since there was no cable jack. I set my treadmill up in there, hung dark curtains, now if I am bored I will go in and watch a movie and walk/run on the treadmill.

I should add, as much as I had the tv ON before, I think it was more for background noise, I rarely paid attention to it. :P

I grew up with a lot of tv, my husband didn't and we kind of adopted his tv lifestyle.

Some nights, we watch no tv but generally, we spend 20-40 minutes watching a show during the weekday. During the weekends, we may watch a couple shows, maybe a couple movies. Like this Saturday/Sunday, we probably watched 230 minutes total of tv ?

Although, I am only counting the 'sitting on couch, watching tv' times. Usually we put music on when we exercise, but sometimes I'll exercise and watch tv at the same time. So I watched about 90 minutes of tv this weekend by myself while exercising.

We don't have cable tv though so what we watch is either through Amazon streaming or Netflix streaming.