(LifeSiteNews) –– This year I am looking forward to a Christmas without TV, and more particularly to a Christmas without YouTube.
In 2010 I read John Senior’s book The Restoration of Christian Culture and was convinced that he was right that removing the television is a crucial step towards creating a Christian culture within your home.
Senior, and others who advocate for removing the TV from one’s home, cite reasons such as the following:
- Televisions invariably become the dominant cultural force in the home.
- They replace the father as the chief authority figure. The powerfully presented individuals and ideas on the screen are given more time and attention than anyone in the home.
- Watchers of television passively consume content in a way that is different to other forms of recreation and which diminish the individual. Alternative recreational activities such as reading a book, listening to live music, or talking to another person require an active engagement from those involved which is absent from watching television
- The time spent watching television could be much more profitably spent on a wide range of other activities, including prayer.
- Much of what is available to view on television is an occasion of sin. Much of the other content may not pose such dangers, but is nevertheless a needless distraction or a waste of time.
Senior wrote his book before most people began owning hand-held smart devices. He wrote his book before YouTube and Netflix effectively became the most popular TV channels in the world.
And despite managing to keep a TV screen out of my home since 2010, I have certainly spent plenty of time on YouTube. I suspect that 90% or more of my time spent on YouTube has been spent consuming sports entertainment. That is because, I have concluded, I am addicted to sports entertainment. I have played football (soccer) ever since I could walk, and have followed professional football since at least the age of seven. I remember where I was when Paul Gascoigne scored (perhaps) the best goal I’ve ever seen when I was just eight years old. When I lived in Australia I used to take hour long journeys on night buses into central Sydney so that at 2 a.m. local time I could watch football being played in England. I spent a significant amount of time this past summer feeling quite frustrated by the seeming inability of the manager of the English football team to see what the rest of the nation’s fans could see. I have spent more time and mental energy watching, thinking and talking about professional football than I like to think about. I will never get that time back, but I can still decide how I will use my time today and in the future.
On Christmas Day I will have been “clean” from sports entertainment for 90 days. My mind feels clearer, I’m less distracted, I’ve spent more time playing sports myself (and feel better for that) and my intention is just to keep going into the new year and beyond.
I’ve been thinking about and occasionally attempting to completely quit following football for about 15 years now. Then, a few years ago, I discovered the world of professional boxing and my addiction doubled. I haven’t just watched many, many football and boxing matches. I have watched and read huge amounts of related entertainment. In the unlikely event that you don’t know this, there is a endless supply of sports analysis, criticism and commentary which can be consumed at the tip of your fingers, for free, on YouTube. You may not be used to seeing it referred to as entertainment, but that is what it is.
Sports entertainment has been described as a never-ending soap-opera for men. We don’t just watch it because we’re interested in the sport itself, we watch it because we’re interested in the progress of particular groups and characters. In England, football has for sometime arguably been the de facto national religion. Arsenal, the team I’ve followed since I was a boy, has a 60,000 capacity all-seater stadium. It is full almost every time they play. Fans go to the stadium and while they watch their team they sing songs in honor of the current players (invariably aged between 16 and 35), managers, past players, and in derision of rival teams. It’s the same story all over London and around the country. There will, of course, be some who sing as passionately in church each week as they do in the stadium. But for many people football is their major cultural interest. And there is no question that the majority of fans in England take football seriously. The idea that it is “just a game” is only ever expressed by people who don’t really understand what football means to people.
It’s beyond the scope of this article to assess the morality of spending time following sports. I am not telling anyone that watching their favorite team is a sin, or that they’re wasting their lives by doing so. But my understanding is that, after grace, time is the most valuable thing we have in this life. And I’ve concluded that I’ve lost too much time to sports entertainment and that the only path for me is going “cold turkey.” I’ve tried significantly reducing how much I watch, but it hasn’t worked for me — I always get sucked back in. Most of us will be tempted to turn to familiar, comforting distractions when we’re not feeling our best. YouTube and other entertainment platforms are all designed to keep us watching, and I’ve spent years developing habits that quickly return if given a chance.
Another impact that distractions like sports entertainment have is that they end up occupying our thoughts even when we’re not watching them. I realized sometime ago that the outcome of sporting events isn’t actually important in either the grand scheme of things, or to me personally. This Christmas, I don’t want to think about Arsenal, the English national football team, or a boxing match. I want to think about Our Lord’s birth, my own family and 1,001 other things which can enrich and uplift the soul. As I say, after more than 80 days of “going clean” from my addiction, I feel much better for it.
