Overexposure

A sentence in “Matters of Fact” for March 1988 reads: “By eighteen the average American child is said to have survived 350,000 hours of commercials.…” Since an eighteen-year-old has been alive for only 157,680 hours (24 x 365 x 18), any eighteen-year-olds who have been exposed to 350,000 hours of TV commercials must have been watching several TV sets simultaneously twenty-four hours a day every day since the day they were born.