How much television do you watch?

From a Time magazine piece:

“Dr. Frank Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health and his colleagues report in the Journal of the American Medical Association that too much TV time was associated with increases in the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and heart problems and the risk of death from any cause.”

But this was kind of obvious. Right? Sit on your ass for a long period of time, day after day, and you have a greater chance of dying.

The more shocking part of this study, at least for me, was this:

The average American watches about five hours of television a day.

Five hours.

What the hell are these people watching?

And where do they find the time?

There are many, many days when my wife and I don't have time to watch television at all, and we enjoy TV. Last week we didn't turn on the television for four consecutive days.

For the average American, we would’ve just reclaimed 20 hours of our lives.

And they could stand to use those hours.

According to a recent survey conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Americans sleep an average of 8.5 hours per night.

The average American works just under 8 hours a day.

This means that if you combine work, sleep and television, the average American only has about 3 hours left in the day to do everything else.

Three hours for eating, commuting, exercising, reading, bathing, chores, and sex.

Three hours that is not spent at work, in bed or in front of the television.

But even more pertinent than this astounding number:

What the hell are these people watching?

There simply cannot be 35 hours of worthwhile programming to watch per week.

Right?