Why is eating in front of a TV so frowned upon as being trashy? I hate that.
Here's a few reasons... not that I think it's that trashy, some things might apply to me personally, some are more in general.
a. because when I have dinner I want it to be quiet. Some people don't want people talking at a table, and a tv doesn't really make it less quiet
b. I wouldn't want to get into an argument over what to watch during dinner when eating with my partner (or my parents).
c. I think there still is something about people having a "dinner table", and thus sitting there instead of on a couch in front of the tv. The entire idea of having a place to have dinner together still is that corner in the house.
d. To me, eating in front of the tv... I want to enjoy what I'm watching, but I also want to enjoy dinner and I'm horrible at doing both. With that, some people watch a lot of tv in a passive mode, having dinner at the same time, just feels like "shoveling foodrations in" rather then enjoying your meal. How about, we just watch tv while having dinner and do other stuff the rest of the day... that'll be a revolutionairy concept. Also, a bit like C. A lot of people think of cooking a meal for the family as some kind of effort, and with that some "respect" that someone cooked a meal for all of us. If you're shovelling it down cause you're watching tv, it seems less like you actually appreciate it.
But that's a few reasons I can think of and what I've heard people ramble about, though those views might be old fashioned.
Quite often, especially if I made my own dinner (instead of my mom cooking for the family here), I'll grab my plate and go upstairs to finish that movie/podcast/series I was watching (which reminds me, that I still have a plate in my room since a week; that also happens like that, lol.. just like having forks, knives or spoons around) but I'll eat downstairs at the table when my mom cooked for all of us. I can't imagine sitting through dinner for more than 3 minutes downstairs with all those programs my parents watching going on and me sitting with them. During dinnertime, they mostly watch some german programs, which to me pretty much is like german white trash with a lot of screaming, yelling and hysterical behaviour that could give Jerry Springer a run for his money; thus there's the point of "what to watch?". I'd be ok if they'd have dinner at sometime late (instead of between 3 and 4 in the afternoon) and have the news on, but that's something they rarely care for... probably because it's not sensational enough to them... but that's a different discussion.