What is the most popular activity on the face of the Earth, no holds barred? Why, it's TV of course!

No other activity even comes close to the popularity of TV. We watch it, talk about it, pattern our behavior after it, laugh and cry because of it, and have it in nearly every household in America.

When TV was introduced in the late l940s, marketing executives looked into the future and predicted that television would become commonplace in every household. And here we are fifty years later, with no less than 98 percent of American households welcoming television into their homes. For once, I guess the executives knew what they were talking about!

Ponder a few of the following facts about TV and you will begin to understand the enormous impact it has had in our lives:

Did you know that families spend more time watching TV than they do anything else except for working and sleeping? Even so, very few people stop to examine when TV crosses the line from companion to intruder!

Television sets are left "on" an average of seven hours, 40 minutes each day, according to Nielsen reports.

The average TV viewer will see an estimated 20,000 commercials every year. That's about 55 commercials each day. All the while we watch TV our perceptions about self-image, a healthy lifestyle and human behavior are being slowly and systematically changed, and in some cases, distorted.

American children ages 2-17 spend an average of 19 hours, 40 minutes watching TV each week.

American youth watch an average of 1,023 hours of TV yearly, while they only spend about 900 hours in school.

Research by The Annenberg Public Policy Center shows 21 percent of self-professed "educational" programming has little or no educational value.

In year 2000, a National Assessment of Educational Progress report found that students who watch TV the most also suffer the most academically. Students who watched TV for six or more hours a day earned the lowest scores, on average, and those who watched an hour or less earned the highest.

According to a year 2000 National Institute on the Media and the Family report, a child can develop brand loyalty by age 2. This seems incredibly disturbing.

A 1999 Senate Judiciary Committee Staff Report found that by age 18, the average American has seen 200,000 acts of violence on TV, including 16,000 murders.

Since so much of our time growing up is spent watching TV, and so many parents use TV to entertain and "baby-sit," much of our earliest learning and world perspectives are formed while sitting in front of a TV screen.

Much of television advertising targets children because promoters know they are less discerning and more easily influenced than adults. And not surprising, children often insist that their parents purchase what they see advertised on TV. James McNeal, a kids marketing expert, estimates that children under the age of twelve now influence at least $500 billion of family purchases.

The overwhelming evidence for the association between TV advertising and behavior is simply a matter of common sense. The food industry alone spends billions of dollars on TV advertising because they know it produces results. When we see and hear the advertisements often enough, we eventually buy the products.

Apart from the influence that TV advertising has had on our lives, there is another important consideration relative to our eating habits...

Most of us will acknowledge that TV is a sedentary form of entertainment. But, couple this with our tendency to munch on non-nutritious snacks while watching, and we deliver a knockout punch to our best efforts for losing weight.

Even dinnertime, the traditional family catchup period, has been transformed by TV, with many families opting to dine on fast food and take-out, rather than home cooked meals.

Day after day, week after week, year after year, we are pounded by commercials promoting the trendiest fashions, technology or soft drinks until we finally succumb to their relentless attack on our connection to reality.

Let me ask you, "Wouldn't you rather read a book or pursue some other interesting activity rather than allow your mind to get tainted by channels that hype useless products, promote overindulgence and distort your perception of reality?"

There is nothing substantial about a medium that upholds unattainable images for the masses and presents a generally unrealistic and distorted reflection of ourselves and the world.

I am not saying everything about television is detrimental, but it seems to do more harm than good. It seems only to serve as a mind-numbing alternative to reality that drains knowledge, lulls many into a false sense of security and content and urges us to think of nothing.

Life beyond the filtered screen seems much more educational, interesting and entertaining.

If you have been brought-up on a diet of fast food and television chances are you're still doing the same thing today. Habits and beliefs are very difficult to change when they've been ingrained since early childhood. The good news is, that any environmental or behavioral influence (including TV) on a persons habits can be changed, but it takes determination and work.

Just for fun, see if any of the following apply to YOU!

We fall asleep doing it.
We do it first thing in the mourning.
We are challenged by it.
We are isolated by it.
We eat while doing it.
We eat because of it.
We ignore other people while we are doing it.
We laugh at it.
We cry at it.
We get angry at it.
We are bored by it.
We are entertained by it.
We pay to do it.
We must have the latest technical equipment to do it.
We use it to relax.
We use it as a babysitter.
We consciously pattern our behavior after it.
We are subconsciously influenced by it.
We do it whenever, wherever, and however we want.
We bring sex and violence into our homes while we do it.
We use it to keep us company when we are alone.
We are misled by it.
We are lead by it.
We envy other people we see while doing it.
We argue about it.
We do other things while we listen to it in the background.
We do it to educate ourselves.
We do it to introduce ourselves to far away places.
We do it to stay informed.
We brag about doing it.
We complain about doing it.
We gossip about it.
We talk about it everywhere.
We become addicted to it.