We live in a world filled with entertainment possibilities. Do you find yourself with not enough time to enjoy it all? Satellite TV, iPods, TiVo, DVDs, cable, blogs, movies, video games. How do you divide your attention between all these entertainment choices?

With so many options at your fingertips have you found it to be more frustrating than liberating? It is a world of endless possibilities. But is that really good for us?

Stay tuned to Beyond Today as we discuss:  Entertainment Overload.

Is it possible that we are no longer in the Information Age? You’ve noticed the growing emphasis on entertainment. TV, podcasts, satellite radio, social networking, you tube, message boards, books, internet, computer games. Is there any doubt that we now live in the entertainment age?

How has it affected you?  Do you believe that some day you’ll have seen and heard everything? Would it be some sort of entertainment Nirvana? Technology seems to have pushed us into that kind of thinking. Carrying an iPod means we can have lifetime of music in the size of a credit card. TiVo tell us we can record every program possible and live TV and never miss anything ever again.

How about the DVD’s that come with all the extras? Not only can we find just about any obscure movie that was ever produced, but we can watch all the deleted scenes edited from the original while listening to the director explain why he decided to cut them. Is that more than we need? Who cares?

Here’s a challenge. You could have a huge cache of high-tech devices but at some point, this world of countless possibilities becomes overwhelming. There are only so many hours in the day that your senses can be bombarded.  Consider 300 radio channels, a couple of dozen premium cable-TV stations, plus an endless stream of Pay Per View, with movies delivered to your door. Doesn’t it follow, if you plug in here, it means you have to tune out there. After all, even Jack Bauer only has 1,440 minutes to save the world on “24”.

Barry Schwartz, a psychology professor and author of “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.” Says, “What these devices allow you to do is experience an almost infinite variety of cultural events.” But, he contends, having more choices than ever “means you get less satisfaction out of whatever you choose.”

So what is the cost of this entertainment overload? Let’s examine just one entertainment medium – TV. Here’s a quick summary of a recent study:

1. The average U.S. household has at least one TV set turned on for about seven hours a day.

2. How many hours does the average school-aged child watch TV? About 30 hours per week! (The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that a child watch no more than one to two supervised hours of TV a day.

3. In a year, children will spend more time watching TV than they spend in school or participating in any other activity except sleep.

4. Consider this - 40 percent of a 6-year-old's viewing time is spent watching shows intended for adults; about 80 percent of a 12-year-old's viewing time.

5. The average American child will have watched 100,000 acts of violence by the time he or she finishes the sixth grade.

So what are the results? You may be thinking, “So what, I watched a lot of TV and I didn’t turn out so bad.”  But by and large it is accepted that all this TV watching has three main effects on children: 

1. They become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others
2. They become more fearful of the world around them, and
3. They are more likely to behave in aggressive or harmful ways toward others.

A recent study in Britain revealed three other effects. The more a child is exposed to television and the Internet, the more materialistic they become and the worse they relate to parents and the worse their mental health.

In addition to these, all that sitting around makes them fat. Studies prove that American kids are in the worst physical shape they've ever been in.

So many sights, sounds, impressions, and images are all competing for your time, for our attention and thoughts.  Everyday your mind is exposed to far more information than you can consciously process.

Have you ever felt that the sheer volume of ideas and information that bombards your mind creates a battle for control over what you think and believe? This battle for your mind is a reality that you cannot afford to ignore.

Believe it or not, you are the focus of relentless efforts to influence your beliefs, and some of the subtle skills meant to shape the way you think are astonishingly powerful and effective.

The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurileus said in so many words that a “man's character is determined by his thoughts.” What do you think of on a daily basis?  From one thought to the next, what do they consist of? Do you find yourself in fleeting, insignificant little thoughts that don’t add up to anything meaningful?  You can deceive yourself, but does all this entertainment really benefit your mind?

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Who exerts the greatest influence on your personal opinions? What are the pulls that sway your thinking the most? What sources affect your standard of behavior?

Do you feel a constant drumbeat from reviewers, reporters and commentators on TV, radio and internet, insisting that we have to see the next great movie, order those CDs and set the DVR for the next 10 episodes of this unmissable programs? 

We have reached entertainment overload. Have you noticed that if you take the time and money to buy the latest greatest gadget and figure out how to use it, it can be more frustrating than liberating? Perhaps we reached technology saturation. Some times it seems that you can't decide what you want to do.

Do you find it harder to focus?  Attention spans are less and less.

Have you heard of this strange distressing feeling that reportedly can come over some iPod users? With all that music at their fingertips, they find it more difficult to be satisfied with the track they’ve chosen to listen to. Like my TV, the urge to surf is greater, not because the program is bad, but because logic says there must be something even better on another station.

Author Barry Schwartz: “people think they can do three things at one time and lose nothing, but that's false. They try to multitask, but in the long run they'll pay for it”

Like it or not, you are the target in a never-ending struggle for control over the way you think—and behave. How you think controls the way you live and how you relate to other people. Your thoughts will influence your decisions and as a result your actions. Ultimately, you are what you think.

You have to ask yourself: “Does the entertainment world reflect—or even respect—the values of most families?”  Doesn’t it seem that popular entertainment goes out of its way to challenge decency? “Should I allow this barrage of constant entertainment influence and overrun right values?”

After all, who has the right to set the standard for the way we think and behave?  There is a source for absolute standards for humanity. The Almighty God, the one who created you, reveals how we should live. These are proper moral standards, principles for distinguishing right from wrong. Guidelines for the way we live.

The internet and TV can be entertaining and at times educational but we can’t allow all the choices to entangle us and steal our time, upset our priorities or even worse.  Listen to what your bible says, “You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it's your last free act. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All your lives you've let sin tell you what to do. But thank God you've started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!” (The Message Romans 6:16-18)

What is your experience? Who or what is your master? God has the ultimate freedom.

Who and what do you listen to? Has the freedom you have muddled your life?
Perhaps you’ve gotten out of balance. A recent study verified this by concluding that this flood of entertainment can push “aside time spent in other activities…that would provide long-term benefits…”. In other words, it might make you feel good in the short term but long term it most likely leads to overall unhappiness.  How’s your level of happiness.

Does this bible passage reflect our entertainment-overloaded society today? Romans 1:28-32 “People did not think it was important to have a true knowledge of God. So God left them and allowed them to have their own worthless thinking and to do things they should not do. They are filled with every kind of sin, evil, selfishness, and hatred. They are full of jealousy, murder, fighting, lying, and thinking the worst about each other…They invent ways of doing evil…they themselves not only continue to do these evil things, they applaud others who do them. (NCV)

Almost sounds like the next blockbuster movie trailer. But it’s not.  Entertainment has drawn us away from what is most important. Many have lost the knowledge of God.

Does this bible passage identify our world today?

“They make music with fiddles and flutes, have good times singing and dancing…They say to God, ‘Get lost! We've no interest in you or your ways. Why should we have dealings with God Almighty? What's there in it for us?’ But they're wrong, dead wrong—they're not gods. It's beyond me how they can carry on like this!” (Job 21:12-16 The Message)

You see your bible’s got it right. Don’t you be dead wrong.  Don’t let entertainment excess steal your time and ultimately your life.  What can you do about it? You can choose a better way.

There is a purpose for your life.  Find out about it. Take time to exercise your brain and do something different. Stimulate your thinking and seek spiritual understanding.

God says to call upon Him and He will listen to you (Jer. 29:12-13). He can lead you out of the muddled mess of meaningless amusement to what is truly important.

Take time to turn off your ipod, TV, radio, internet or whatever is distracting you and think about the purpose of your life. Why were you born?  If you will look to God and follow His instructions you can unlock truly wonderful and awesome mysteries beyond your imagination. It's waiting for you in the pages of God's inspired Word, the Bible!

There’s much more to discuss on this topic. Is it possible to get control of your time?  How can you set better priorities? Up next we’ll be talking with the Beyond Today panel – stay with us.