Effects Of Tv On Society Essay, Research Paper
How many would believe the common television is a major building block of our
present society? Yes, the very T.V. in your bedroom is one of the many influences that
built and is building our society at this very moment. Through its’ many commercials, sitcoms, and
movies, they lay thick layers of influences on the average individual. The introduction of
the television into the America forever effected the society, and still effects the society at
our present time.
The television reached labratory perfection in the 1930’s, but it did not reach the
market until 1945, just after WWII. The introduction of television made an enormous
impact, some even claimed it was ” The Birth of the Information Age.”. It opened the doors
for the many branches of marketing, news and entertainment. Thousands of advertisment
agencies saw the potential and envisioned the T.V. being the ultimate tool in raking in the
capital. The media imagined a nationwide network being able to reach into the homes of
every individual in the U.S., bringing ground-breaking news and events to every television
across the nation simutaneously. The enertainment industry would take off and soar to
uncomparable heights. Enertainment would be revoulutionized through huge strides, with
endless movies, sitcoms, and talk shows. The television quickly began to alter the hard
working and ever so changing America into a mindless society completely devoid to the
sense of right and wrong.
Soon after the television made its way in to the homes of America, things began to
change. The past nights spent with the family, gathered around the radio listening to the next
installment of your favorite series quickly became accompanied with visions. Thus
television – with its’ gifts of paralysis along with the symbiant creature, the notorious couch
potato became the newest thing, causing anti-social behaviors. That one assumes a
‘vegetable’ state in a trance-like manner, pushing thier responsibilities aside. From the
television, viewers are exposed to the ideas and influences proposed and applied by the
endless commercials, movies, and shows, and when ended, leaving thier mind’s
imagination shocked and wondering the possibilities. The influences give all sorts of ideas
and plots, bringing to light new problems and inefficiencies, such as eating to much,
envying the celebrated, coveting merchandise, lusting after images, angry at the news and
then being perversly proud of what distance we may enjoy between the couch and what
appears on the screen. Children went from being raised with the innocence of oven-warm
cookies and milk and playful puppies to the incident when a five year old in Ohio burned
down his trailer, killing his sister, inspired by the cartoon animation Beavis and Butt-head.
On the present scale of things, that incident is not only old but not as shocking as present
problems. What is it in the crepuscular blue-gray cathode glow that we have spawned
affectless toadstools, thieves, and cannabalistic rapist-killers? The influences layed upon
the common viewer are unbelievable, through an endless barrage of shows, movies, and
news our morals and beliefs are attacked and weakened. Weakened to such an extent that
we become amused with public displays of moral and psychological decay, for example
the now, nation renowned talk show: The Jerry Springer show. Appealing to the lowest
levels of society and steadily recruiting fans from the educated and prestigious. A show in
which the bizarre and the perverted are the case, where children take in appalling and
twisted themes for a reality, ( For say, ” The 600lb. Lady” or ” My Girlfriend is Cheating
on Me with My Mother.”) and not to mention the all to frequent acts of violence. An older
brother coming home with little sisters watching this show creates no other feelings but
disappointment and disgust. The television is hardly regulated, thus many influences began
to pour upon society and fuse into the slow process of change which resulted in the
characteristics of our present day society.
The television took America from an organized and uniform nationwide wavelength, and
transformed it into a choatic disarray of new thoughts, philosophies and people of diversity. The majority
of them are more questionable. The statistics on telvision in the average Americans’ life is shocking to
some and believable to most. To share just a few should make a strong point. For instance, the percentage
of U.S. household with at least one T.V. is 98%, the percent of children between 2-5 with T.V.’s in thier
room are 25%, and the most shocking is the percentage of 4-6 year olds who, when asked to choose
between watching T.V. and spending time with thier fathers, chose television 54%! It is a sad world when
children have thier own T.V.’s at the ages of 2-5 in the first place. Children who never learn to understand
and remember language without the pictures and cinema along with the material are going to have trouble
when they have to listen to a teacher or author of a textbook. They look around the meaning rather than
creating it inside thier own heads. According to Dr. Jerre Levy, a biopsychologist at the University of
Chicago and an internationally known authority in hemispheric development, ” When children commit
time looking at TV, they’re not spending time reading. When a child reads a novel, he has to self-create
whole scenarios, he has to create images of who these people are, what their emotions are, what their
tones of voice are, what the environment looks like, what the feeling of this environment is. These self-
created scenarios are important, and television leaves no room for that creative process…..Brains are
designed to meet cognitive challenges. It’s just like muscles, if you don’t excercise they wither. If you don’t
excercise brains, they wither.” It’s both astonishing and painful that TV has such an effect on our lives.
The typical American youth spends time 1,500 hours watching TV, per year. While the same youth gets
about only 900 hours of school, per year. The fact that schools have to compete with television to educate
Americas’ youth should be shameful to America itself. Children should be taught by educated graduates of
universities rather than the corrupting television filled with scandals, drugs, violence, sex, and unguided
themes and ideas. Although those issues can be learned in school, they are given in a much better light
and have reason, as well as clearly stating the consequences of those actions.
So the next time you are bored out of your mind, and decide to watch TV, DON’T! Could you
imagine how much TV an individual would, on average, one would watch in a lifetime if every year
he/she watches 1,500 hours a year. That is alot of TV! So instead of zoning out into a world of
commercials and perversion, do something more creative, stand out be unique amongst the rest of
America. Expand your mind rather than fill it with trash that will never contribute to bettering humanity
as a whole only diminish it. Even if you don’t win a nobel prize or some prestigious award, you yourself
will have the confidence and pride for being more intelligent than someone who has seen every Jerry
Springer show since it’s premiere!