:) Clearly you are not a hard-core gamer or you don't have any friends who spends 200~ hours on a MMORPG per month. Although I generally agree with that TV argument.

I'd argue that playing 200 hours of a mmorpg is more valuable, helps grow more, and is generally way better than watching TV 200 hour.

Have you played an MMORPG? I've done both (200 hours in a month of MMO, 200 hours in a month of TV), and I think the time spent on the MMORPG was far more of a waste.

It probably depends, but I'll add my 2 cents. Never done 200 hours of either in a month (really? 200 hours? that's insane), but after I went on my Dexter marathon, at least I'd seen Dexter. I still reference it all the time. The hours I spent on WoW were... well, I don't remember. That's probably your point.

Agreed. I often tell my parents to turn it off, to spend their free time actively. Watching TV is passive entertainment at its worst.

I wish they listened.

You should suggest and encourage them towards new activities, rather than trying to get them to stop one activity. It's psychologically much more effective.

I honestly do it with board games, card games, etc. It psychologically takes them a huge effort to even speak about playing.

In some ways, hacker news can be worse than TV, too. When I watch TV, it /feels/ like I'm wasting time. HN can feel like I'm doing something useful.

Sitting on reddit may be slightly better than TV, but not by much. I'm considering limiting all "light" reading soon.