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    "ocrText": "Page 17\nFederal News Service, MARCH 1, 1996\nI\nalso see myself -- I watch less and less television, as I get more active in\nclubs and sports and groups at my school and going out with my friends. And\nthere are better things to do than watch television.\nAnd the kids could be playing -- like my little brother prefers to go out and\nplay in the woods, or build forts with his friends than to watch television.\nKids need to expand their imaginations. And they could be doing 80 many other\nthings that would benéfit them, instead of watching cartoons and violence, et\ncetera, et cetera, on television.\nMS. Recent studies have shown that kids in the inner city watch up to 11\nhours of television a day. And it's important for us to acknowledge that for\nsome parents, they'd much rather have their kids in the house, watching TV, than\nout in the neighborhood that might not be safe, or in activities or with\nfriends that they don't particularly approve of what the friends are doing.\nSo I'd much rather have my son at home watching \"X-Men\" and \"Mighty Morphin\nPower Rangers\" than out there with someone who's actually -- has got a real gun,\nplaying pretend. And when I talk to parents' groups about the fact that the\naverage American household watches seven hours a day, people are usually\nshocked. They hear seven hours: \"How could you do it?\"\nBut when you really think of it, many of us use the television as an alarm clock\nin the morning. So it's very, very common for households to have the TV on for\ntwo hours in the morning, while you find out what's the weather, what are the\nschool lunches.\nAnd then kids who come home from school, they watch a couple of hours in the\nafternoon. And as we know, many parents watch the news with their kids over --\nwhile they're cooking dinner and then at dinner. By the time you've added two\nor three hours of prime time, you're not even talking David Letterman or \"The\nTonight Show. It really is not hard to add those hours up a day.\nAnd the kids who are watching 11 hours a day are going to school, but they're\nalso watching cartoons in the morning or watching cartoons in the afternoon.\nThey're watching in the evenings.\nAnd this young man mentioned to me that he's got the sense that a lot of the\nkids here don't watch a lot of TV. And I said I think it's because your parents\nare really aware. And even though there are parents that are also concerned,\nthey don't quite know what to do and how to offer alternatives, or the\nalternative of watching the show and having this fantasy makes them safer.\nSo, I think that the V-chip will be helpful to a lot of the parents. But I also\nthink that encouraging parents to help kids be critical viewers and choose what\nthey're watching carefully is also really important, too.\nPRESIDENT CLINTON: What do you think?\nYOUNG GIRL: Well, I think it's kind of like sad what's being put on TV now. And\nit's really good because the V-chip is going to be able to get rid of those\nthings. Because there are things like \"Tales from the Crypt\" and \"X Files\" and\nthose things freak me out, and I'm -- (inaudible). And it's really sad because\nlittle kids are watching them and they get the wrong sense of reality. And they\nshouldn't be watching these things because that leaves them in their rooms\nhugging their teddy bears saying, \"I'm not afraid of the dark, I'm not afraid of\nthe dark,\" practicing for when they're supposed to go to bed, instead of going\noutside and like playing with their friends, riding their bikes and all that\nstuff. And they should be, you know, having fun and not being scared, and it's\nreally awful that they get addicted to it and everything. They should spend\nmore time outside, have fun with their friends because you only get to be a\nchild once.\nVICE PRESIDENT GORE: Have you or any of your friends ever had nightmares and\ntrouble sleeping because of images you've seen on television?"
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