ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we look at how nonviewers feel about living without television and how they think others perceive them. I report on the attitudes of adults and of children. Adults, because they have typically made the decision to live without television on their own, are quite positive about living without it. In fact, some are down-right zealots. However, children give a more varied picture of their lives without television. The youngest children, those 10 and younger, generally parrot their parents, stating that they like living without television because they have more time to play and because they are unlikely to develop any bad habits that adults often associate with television exposure. During early adolescence, however, children often miss television because they feel socially different from their television-viewing peers. For many children in early adolescence, difference of any kind is a difficult burden to bear. However, during late adolescence, most children again value their lives without television and no longer regard it as a negative aspect of their lives. To understand this pattern of attitudes in children, I utilize information from the literature on children’s attitudes towards smoking as it relates to their own parents’ smoking attitudes and behaviors.
