The TV set is an indispensable object in quite a few people's lives. Upon coming home after a busy day, one can turn on the black box in the living room. Inside this box lie hundreds of channels for the choosing. You need only to sink into your sofa in order to mindlessly while away hours of your time.

According to 2005 statistics from the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, people aged 15 and over in Taiwan spend more time on "watching TV" than on any other activity they engage in during their free time. On average two hours and 15 minutes are spent each day in front of the TV, occupying one third of people's total free time. The second-ranking activity, "reading newspapers or magazines, or surfing the Internet," occupied only 39 minutes of time. Furthermore, as people's age goes up, so does their TV viewing time. Those in the 15-24 age group averaged one hour and 34 minutes a day while those 65 and older watched three hours and 28 minutes. This demonstrates the significant position that TV occupies in Taiwanese people's daily lives.

Much research, both domestic and international, has been done on the harmful effects of TV's all-out invasion. For individuals, the most marked is the strengthening of "alpha waves," which have a hypnotic and stultifying effect on the brain. There is also a significant weakening of beta waves, which represent liveliness and quick thinking. This is especially apparent in children. Consequently, the saying that "watching too much TV will make you stupid" is, indeed, not without truth. Its influence on one's metabolism and levels of activity and attention may easily lead to addiction, and this addiction is even more difficult to overcome. As time goes on, one develops an inertial nature that relies on TV to kill time and causes one's lifestyle to become increasingly monotonous and lacking in variety.

In terms of television's effects on families, as more time is spent on TV, naturally the time available for and interest in other activities are squeezed out. These days, family time often means an entire evening spent staring at characters on the screen engaging in endless chatter while hardly a word is exchanged between family members. It has even got to the point where the "four-member household with five TV sets" (one per bedroom plus another for the living room) is increasingly commonplace. Each person watches his own show and there is no need to fight over control of the remote. As a result, some have called the television the black hole of the family and the killer of family relationships.

Quite a few people have also discussed TV's negative role in society. The wide availability of channels that bring hours of violent, pornographic, or horror-themed images into the home has had a huge influence on children. The large-scale National Television Violence Study conducted by American academics claims that TV violence should be held responsible for the rising rate of juvenile crime.

In contrast to Europe's public-television-based system and its thoughtful and substantial programming, the US is the perfect example of a commercialized TV environment. The tendency of its content to incite emotions and dull thinking has for many years made it a target of denunciation. This is also why the TV-Turnoff movement started in America, and in recent years has expanded worldwide.

TV-Turnoff Network, the organization behind America's TV-Turnoff movement, is a group made up of various non-profit organizations. Its background is quite diverse and complex and its members come from various fields including education, environmental protection, religion, social activism, public health, child welfare, and outdoor activities. Currently there are over 70 participating organizations, including the YMCA.

The groups that promote this event feel that people should use the time spent watching TV on more meaningful family or community related activities. Examples include taking out the family photo album and reflecting on one's family history, listening to radio, playing the piano, reading books, visiting the zoo, writing letters to friends, learning to cook, raising flowers and plants, and gardening. This would help people reclaim long-lost joys of life. This sounds like a simple appeal, but the reaction has been widespread and worldwide these past few years.

Since 1994, the TV-Turnoff movement has gradually spread all around the world. According to TV-Turnoff Network statistics, there are currently over 60 countries participating in this event and more than 24 million people have already taken part. In 2004 alone, 7.6 million people joined in the event, truly making it a global citizens' movement.

Some people are not content with just turning off their own TVs. They want to take up guerilla warfare against the omnipresence of televisions in public spaces. Armed with an electronic device called "TV-B-Gone," they go to any public space with a running TV such as restaurants, bars, buses, or stores and with the press of a button on the device, which looks like a remote control for a car security system, all televisions within a 45-foot radius are turned off! The guerilla fighters that employ this "mischief-making" tool to attack TVs hope to bring back the peace and quiet that public spaces once offered. They also want to enable those involved in this activity to smile and talk with each other instead having their space invaded and occupied by the muck on the screen.

This global tide of turning off the TV, reflecting on life, and re-opening lines of interpersonal communication has also entered Taiwan. In 2004, Miaoli Community University held Taiwan's first TV-Turnoff event as part of their Public Participation Week. They hoped that students could try a week of "life without TV" at home and use this time to rediscover themselves, the people around them, and their environment.

The Taiwanese version of the TV-Turnoff movement entered its third year this year. Its slogan started off as "turn off the TV, take a walk." The second year it was "turn off the TV, take up reading." This year the slogan was "turn off the TV, engage in learning." Through these slogans, the school has sought to integrate the media movement with the community university's mission of holistic, lifelong learning. Moreover, the rising popularity these past few years of the "Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability" (LOHAS) movement, which advocates the pursuit of quality of life and physical and mental health, has also enabled Taiwan's TV-Turnoff movement to gradually gain momentum. The growth has been rapid with the number of participating organizations expanding from around 60 in 2005 to 215 in 2006, with over 100,000 people taking part.

What can one do when not watching television? For many people, the second-nature action of switching on the TV every night after coming home from a busy day is the only way for them to wind down and pass the long night. For them to quit their TV addiction is no easy task. It is especially tough for those who are just starting out in the TV-Turnoff movement. Without an alternative activity or the company of friends, facing a quiet space without the accompaniment of the TV's sights and sounds can easily cause them to fidget around with unease until they finally surrender to the power button on their remote control.

Yu Yang-chou, Shih Hsin University journalism department lecturer and longtime observer of citizen and media issues, feels that most of those with the ability to turn off their TVs and engage in alternative activities are those in the middle class with higher levels of learning and greater availability of lifestyle resources. However, for laborers that make up a larger part of society, to ask them to give up watching TV after a long day of physically demanding work and engage in alternative activities which they are not good at or are unfamiliar with is not only unfair but also likely to be stressful and burdensome.

To deal with the emptiness and restlessness caused by TV turnoff, Miaoli Community University has provided various alternative activities and events. They have linked together nationwide township libraries, local cultural centers, 27 community colleges throughout Taiwan, publishing houses, and ecological, environmental, and media welfare groups. Over 500 events are held islandwide, in every city and county. These activities include storytelling by famous people, book reading for mothers, drawing for mother and child, and ecological tours. All of these provide the people with activities to engage in outside of watching television.

Miaoli Community University dean Chiang Min-hsiu says that Taiwan's version of the TV-Turnoff movement approaches it from three angles: personal, family, and the public arena. The hope is that by forgoing television, people will be able to reexamine their quality of life from five different perspectives: media, health, parent-child relations, art, and travel. He hopes that everyone may discover that "one's lifestyle after turning off the TV can be even more colorful and fulfilling!"

Kuan Chung-hsiang, chairman of the Media Watch Foundation, states that like it or not, TV has become a part of modern life and it is impossible to avoid. Consequently, the TV-Turnoff movement is not so much a passive boycott of the media as a people's movement of supervision of the media. Through their collective voice and action, the people can demand that TV stations produce higher-quality, more diverse programming. At the same time, the people can take the opportunity to reflect on their own relationship with the media and understand how to evaluate information they receive from TV with a critical eye, instead of passively accepting everything that is fed to them. "As a result, TV-Turnoff is a type of cultural reflection movement. Its purpose is to be able to see better-quality media content the next time the television is turned on."

Taipei resident Chu Kang-wei participated in the TV-Turnoff movement for the first time this year at the urging of a friend. Apart from him and his wife, the family also incudes two children, aged five and six. Chu says that when he first demanded his children, who normally have control over the remote, not to watch TV for one week, they absolutely could not accept it. Not only did they cry and shout, one time they also refused to eat dinner in protest.

Chu had a sudden spark of inspiration and thought, why not make TV-Turnoff into a game? The whole family would participate and compete against the children of other friends' families to see who could "hold out" the longest. His kids gradually came to accept this idea and even put some effort into it.

After three weeks of quarantining themselves from TV, the time that Chu family members spent watching decreased even though they no longer forced themselves not to watch. In the past, Chu would go home and sit in front of the TV screen for the whole evening. All sorts of grotesque and chaotic images that appeared on the news programs would make him feel depressed. "Now I only watch for ten minutes before switching channels so that I can take myself out and maintain a clear head instead of sinking in."

However, for his lively and active kids, those three weeks without television were not enough to "change them subconsciously." Although Chus currently only allow the kids to watch TV three days a week, once the "ban" on watching TV is lifted, the children revert to their bad habits of fighting over the remote control and watching during meals. Whether or not to watch TV has become a tug of war between grown-ups and children.

Kuan Chung-hsiang points out that parents these days are so busy with work that they often just automatically dump their children in front of the TV without seeking to understand what kind of messages they are absorbing. This is the same as turning the raising of their kids over to a complete stranger. On the other hand, some parents see TV as an evil "source of pollution" and do not have a TV set at home. They also completely forbid their children from watching any TV. As a result, when the kids go to school they have no topics in common to talk about with their classmates. These two extremes are both unsuitable.

After participating in the TV-Turnoff movement, Kuan Chung-hsiang discovered that he has become much more patient with his children than in the past. Now when his kids wish to watch TV, he will do his best to make time to watch along with them. One time when his kids were quarreling, one of them suddenly swore, "You crazy bitch!" He disturbingly sensed the influence that TV serial dramas had on the children. From then on he was more careful to help his children interpret and filter messages coming from the television. The TV had become a good tool for parent-child communication and child education.

National Chengchi University journalism professor Feng Chien-san affirms the TV-Turnoff movement's intentions to arouse public consciousness and focus on family lifestyles. However, he feels that after being awoken in this way, the public should not only concern themselves with keeping their own lifestyles clean, but should actively seek to understand what kind of media structure it is that spawns the kind of TV content which sickens and enrages people today. TV-Turnoff, then, is only one measure in the whole media reform movement. The ultimate goal is to enable the public to take a step further and to imagine a TV environment which better meets the standards of "justice" and "public welfare."

This will be a long-term public self-awareness movement. Although the TV-Turnoff movement cannot solve all the problems of the television culture, it is a starting point for awakening people to concern themselves with the media environment.