I have a friend who calls TV the ‘Idiot Box’.
LOL - my parents called it that back when my siblings and I were little kids. Back when there were only the three network channels and a few independent ones.
Oh, we watched stuff and so did they, but excessive TV-watching was discouraged. And when we were stationed overseas for three years in the pre-AFNTV days, nobody watched TV. And we didn’t miss it.
I remember when my parents first got cable in the 80s, my dad said, “Oh great, we’ve gone from six channels of drivel to 70 channels of drivel.”
I’ve heard TV referred to as ‘idiot box’ for as long as I can remember (1950s).
The term was probably borrowed from other areas of life, perhaps jail or school punishment.