<p>My D bought a small, inexpensive tv & DVD player. She hasn't watched it yet! There are a few programs she thought she'd want to watch, but she has found that the time just isn't there. I do believe she & friends have watched some DVD's on the weekend, though.</p>
<p>My son is a freshman in a suite style dorm. There is a tv in the common room which he occasionally watches. In our family, we enjoy the tv alot;we find it both entertaining and informative. And here's the big surprise: son reports that he likes the idea that he is watching less tv.</p>
<p>I (frosh at NYU) didn't bring one b/c I thought there wouldn't be enough space. However, my roommate insisted and she brought a 15" flatscreen. It fits really well but we honestly rarely watch it. Also, so many people on our floor have bigger TVs I'd imagine we'd watch their's if we all gathered. (We did watch the Notebook earlier, which was nice). On a side note, the TV in the basement common room, NEVER GETS USED. People have much better tvs/laptops intehir rooms.</p>
<p>DS's roommate notified him that he had a flat screen TV and XBox 360 he was bringing to college. At first I wasn't pleased - I remember watching TV in the lounge as a social event (YES, Ebeeeee, we all gathered for the Luke & Laura GH wedding!). I was afraid that having a TV in the room would make DS less likely to venture out of the room and socialize. But apparently everyone has one in their room - all rooms are wired for cable - so even if DS ventured to the lounge to watch TV, he'd probably be alone. DS says the TV in his room pretty much stays on ESPN. Kids do get together in rooms to play video games - DS hangs out down the hall where a friend has Wii Guitar Hero.</p>
<p>Rule of thumb in our house - no one is allowed to have a TV in their bedroom until they graduate from high school. Again, I wanted the kids to come into the room where the rest of the family is and socialize instead of holing themselves up in their rooms. But our graduation rule allowed us to justify having a TV in our room!</p>
<p>Let her have the tv. It's soooo true. I got mine when for my 17th b-day (only because I couldn't think of anything I wanted other than a horse and I had already totaled a car...) so it just seemed natural to bring it with me to school when I transferred to one closer to home. I never watched it much at home- only used it for my old video game system.... Now, I don't even bother turning the tv on unless my shows are on (House, Grey's, Desperate Housewives..). </p>
<p>I'm sorry but it's the internet/computer that you should even be MORE worried about!!!! :)</p>
<p>I think a lot of us are still hung up on that 90's phenomena of how the tv rots our brain and distracts us from schoolwork (remember that no tv for a week/month campaign?.... now it's harmless compared to Internet addiction!</p>
<p>there is a tv in our room, but we never plugged it in or anything. but our dorm has a social lounge with a big flat screen tv with cable and hbo and all. i like not having a tv (even though i miss some of my shows) and its much more fun to go into the lounge and watch tv with other people from the dorm.</p>
<p>I never had a TV in my room at home - my mom wouldn't allow it because she thought she'd never see me (though I got my own computer my senior year of high school, which should have been a bigger concern - especially after we installed the DVD drive). Recently, she moved the Nintendo and a really old TV into my room (which my sister, a high school senior, sleeps in), but I don't think my sister ever uses it.</p>
<p>I do have a TV in college, and I use it to unwind - often to avoid being social, but reading (which I also do to unwind) is also a solitary activity. I do a lot of social things - study groups, spending time with my friends, extracurricular activities, etc - and sometimes I just need time to myself. I use a VCR to tape my TV shows and the occasional movie, so I'm never glued to the TV when a show is on and I watch on my own time.</p>
<p>I'm not good at doing homework in my room (the computer is the real distraction) so the TV doesn't really impact my schoolwork either. I leave my room and go to the library or other place with lots of table space to do my homework.</p>
<p>I can't imagine not having a TV! I live in a single and have quite a bit of work to do, so I keep my TV on low on CNN or CSPAN 24/7, and if something catches my ear, I turn it up. I spent the summer without a TV and felt so out of it that it was horrible! While I read plenty of online newspapers, I don't have easy access to a paper to read cover to cover, so I best get my national news from CNN and my international news from reading the NYTimes, BBC, and Latin American papers.</p>
<p>Common room TVs are out for news because most college students don't want to sit around and watch the news when they could be watching Desperate Housewives or CSI! (though I will admit that I watch House, Law and Order, and Lost religiously :P ).</p>
<p>No TV, but you don't need one! My son has a nice sizeable flat panel monitor and good speakers. Amazon.com has Unbox, which offers the shows he wants to keep track of. Paying per show ($2.00, usually) means they make the show a social event and don't spend too much time watching TV. His dorm doesn't really have good common rooms, so his very sizable room is optimized for small gatherings. </p>
<p>I think this is working out really well for him, but time will tell.</p>
<p>I'm coming very late into this thread and haven't read all the posts. I am just responding to the statement "she asked for one" in the OP. My answer to that question if it came from my d. would be a definite no; I don't think my d. would be dumb enough to even waste the energy asking. </p>
<p>My d. had a TV in her room last year. I don't think she has one this year. She also had cable for several months last year, until she decided the service was too expensive and canceled it. </p>
<p>I did not and would not have bought a TV for my d, nor paid for cable. I simply think that t.v. & cable are luxury items that is outside what it is reasonable for parents of college students to pay for. If the kid wants that -- fine - but let the kid pay out of her own funds. I cannot think of a single plausible reason why a parent should be the one to provide a t.v.</p>
<p>It's very simple: I'm paying for tuition & housing. The kid needs to come up with funds for entertainment on her own. It is up to her to figure how to budget whatever funds she has.</p>
<p>Good point, calmom. I didn't remember the "she asked for one" part. </p>
<p>Our son and his roommate paid for their own TV and for the cable. It never occurred to any of us that we, the parents, would provide either.</p>
<p>my daughter didn't have a tv at college- but since I often thought of her school as summer camp with essays that seems appropriate.
WHen would you have time to watch tv at camp?
They did occasionally show movies in one of the lecture halls- and some years one of the RAs might have brought a tv that he left in one of the student lounges, but I think the kids appreciated not having a televison, because then their entertainment was on their schedule, not the networks.</p>
<p>( don't they spend more time searching youtube anyway?)
;)</p>