I was all set to make fun of that headline, culled from a news report over on USA Today, about the literal dangers of televisions, but then I got kind of sad thinking about it. See, it turns out that all these newfangled television sets that people are buying are SO thin and SO light that kids — climbing up on chairs or stools to change the channel — are literally being killed by falling televisions. Unlike the immovable old-school sets that your grandparents still have — the ones that weigh 125 pounds and have worn a permanent groove in their shag carpet — these new ones are light enough that your two year old, harmlessly watching Sesame Street while you’re making breakfast, can pull them on top of themselves and die from blunt head trauma.
In fact, 29 people, mostly kids, died of from falling televisions in 2011, and more than 200 children have died from falling TVs over the last decade. Moreover, a whopping 18,000 people — mostly kids — are injured and treated in hospitals for falling television injuries.
Dressers are a particularly dangerous place to put televisions.
That’s where Heather Poole, 26, of Surprise, Ariz., had a bedroom TV for her son, Brayden Lee Rodgers. Brayden, age 3, died last Dec. 31 after the TV and dresser fell on him, Poole says. He had been watching a movie before bed. “The only thing we can think is that he climbed up on the dresser to restart the movie,” she says.
It might also be worth nothing that THREE YEAR OLDS SHOULD NOT HAVE TELEVISIONS IN THEIR BEDROOMS. And not just because it will rot their brain out, but because a kid with a TV in his or her room is 40 percent more likely to be obese, and if the falling television doesn’t kill them, the diabetes will.
Now, here are some adorable twins yelling at each other. I’m sure there’s a study out there to demonstrate the harm of putting your infants on YouTube, as well.
(Source: USA Today)
