Is Television a Harmful of Helpful Technology?

From the person who invented the television and brought to the society nowadays, it has been a very important device which people can obtain all kinds of information through the mass media. In general, television was meant to bring people up-to-date events from all around the world. It changed the way of people's living for over half a century. Undeniably, the invention of the television is making people to understand the world better. From news and weather report to music and travel, or even the stock information, those ways will connect people to the world closely. Problems of the appearance of sexuality, violence and language abuse are happening a lot in the recent years, and the critics have been making comments about those negative influences. Excluding the negative influences we can be seen on the TV, television is generally a helpful technology in delivering modern information.

From Marie Winn's essay—"Television: The Plug-In Drug" has stated, "Yet parents have accepted a television-dominated family life so completely that they cannot see how the medium is involved in whatever problems they might be having." (467). This is just possibly an effect of how the parents have used a wrong way to take control of their children. Certainly there are examples shown that their children were affected by massive television watching. But if the parents know how to set-up a schedule of when to let their children to watch TV, wouldn't it be better to prevent their children become socially forbidden? The parents can also choose only the educational programs for their children to watch. In that way their children will get the most benefit out of television watching.

People may ask why can't they just log-on to the computer and get the current information straight from the internet. Why type so many keys while the TV is just a button to press away? It is true that the internet can give us all sorts of information as much as the TV. But people can leave it