In honour of Freedom to Read week, I decided to celebrate that week exercising my freedom to read instead of watching television or movies.
In Canada, 12 million Canadian adults over 16 years of age do not read above a Grade 3 reading level, according to Statistics Canada. I’m pretty sure I’m reading higher than that but over the past couple of years, I have not been exercising that freedom and skill.
Now I am not saying there is anything wrong with television and movies. Probably like most people, I just feel I spend too much time streaming television shows or binge watching Netflix.
Some of my bigger binges I’m quite ashamed of. The worst of them was the four days it took to watch five seasons of Republic of Doyle. At 42 minutes an episode with 68 episodes over five seasons, that amounted to 2,856 minutes – almost 48 hours of Netflix. Divide that by four days and I was watching twelve hours of Netflix per day.
After some digging, that is only double the national average for kids age 6-19 in Canada in 2011, says MediaSmarts, Canada’s Centre for Digital and Media Literacy.
I love to read but my love of television shows and movies it seems has become excessive and has killed that reading love a little bit.
The problem I now have with television watching is that it seems to be a go to activity.
Especially when I’m stuck on a new Netflix show, that is my go to activity especially after work. Pajamas, bed, my tablet, and Netflix.
Forget about reading.
Forget about writing outside of work.
Forget about working on a sewing project.
So how did the week go, and how much television did I give in to watching?
Over the week, it was fine trying to think of other things I could do besides watching television shows and movies but especially during the work week, television suggestions would still pop into my head.
Going to the gym, my mom’s place, or a friends’ house for coffee, they would have the television on and I would find myself glancing at it, unfortunately, but at home, I was in a no-television zone.
Now, I did not make my husband take part in this boycott, even though he was an avid reader himself but now plays on the computer a lot more, but he or I did put on headphones when he did decide to watch a movie.
Alden did ask me if I’d like to do something on Friday as a date night.
His first suggestion was to go to a movie.
Usually that would be the end of discussion. Sure, we’ll go to a movie.
With the no television week, it did actually make us explore other options, like going bowling or a walk.
It was a nice change to take television out of the equation and if I ever do this again in the summer, I’ll have more options to avoid the tube.
