Rod points out that, in judging our use of the media, the main consideration is not the content of the media we use, but the precious time that using the media at all takes away from our families and friendships, to say nothing of our relationship with God. I can confirm that this is something that even people who are otherwise quite harsh in their criticism of the media utterly fail to appreciate.

The problem is that we’re encouraged to think that we have a right to waste time, so to speak, so that if we meet minimum standards of decency and reasonableness in our use of the media, there is really nothing to worry about or criticize. This goes back to a point I made in another post about the misuse of leisure being one of the themes of CCs. Leisure isn’t “doing nothing”, but engaging in activities worthy of free men that, if necessary, require less effort than our professional work.

Christine Rosen’s New Atlantis article on video gaming is an eerie illustration of where the ethos of time-wasting leads. It’s worth asking ourselves, whenever we sit down to watch television or use the internet, whether this is really the best use of our time at that moment. Even if the answer is yes, the question was worth asking.