First of all, no one watches TV anymore. If you look at the Emmy nominations, streaming and non-cable services like HBO, Netflix, and Amazon dominate. So, in its original sense, "TV" is out. This has altered the American identity in association with television - it used to be the place to be for prime time, now it's just whenever we have time.
Regular TV viewing has expired. The only people I know who watch TV regularly are grandmas. Like one of my friend's grandmas who promptly watches reruns of Reba or The Big Bang Theory nightly. Or my own grandma who lives for her weekly Dateline episode.
Our generation has replaced TV with social media. I would much rather spend half an hour jumping from Instagram to Twitter to Snapchat than watching one episode. Pin it on the attention deficit of our generation. But, in fairness, we are consuming more, and I would argue that's a good thing. I could spend half an hour wrapped in the nonsense misadventures of the Kardashians and learn nothing. In five minutes on Twitter I can learn that "'My Name is Earl' star Jason Lee ditched Scientology" (@enews), find out what I should keep and remove from my social media pages when applying for college (@ThePrincetonReview), and, though I'm not Catholic, I can get my Sunday dose of religion after skipping church in, "As Christians, we are called to be missionaries of the Gospel" (@Pontifex, Pope Francis).
So, no I don't really watch TV. In a free moment, I'd rather find out what's going on in the real world than get wrapped up in a fictional one. But, of course, sometimes we'd rather ignore the real world for good reason, which is understandable from time to time. Sometimes I'll watch an episode of Seinfeld if I really have nothing to do, or see what trash is on E!. Maybe I'm just not doing TV right.
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