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!