Television's Effect on Society

Television’s Effect on Society
Television has become an intricate part of our everyday lives. People often find themselves sitting in front of the television screen for a longer period of time than ever before and this is due to the fact that television has evolved immensely over the past several decades. Society is so addicted to television that it has become an issue. The addictive influence television has on children has vastly increased their creativity and ability to do the unthinkable. Television has also affected our health both mentally and physically. In addition, television has changed and exaggerated the way the world is viewed and understood.
The definition of addiction is the condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or involved in something. With children, it is much easier for a child to get addicted to something if that child is intrigued. Television shows and movies show explicit content that are not normally meant for a child’s eyes. “Children learn a violent and aggressive behavior mostly from television drama and cartoons.” Quoted from Brown and Hood’s article “Television and Children”, it explains that children watching these TV shows are being negatively impacted in short term but if the problem is not dealt with, it could change them for the rest of their lives. Another study shows that children who read book on a certain topic actually retained and understood the topic more thoroughly then the children who watched TV on the same topic. This shows that television involves too many distractions with colours, pictures and other objects that make the material harder to understand than just looking a piece of paper with black words on it. Although it is duller, you are more likely to retain the material. This negative impacts both physically and mentally.
Many people have said before, “Sitting in front of the television will melt your brain.” Is this really true? Hypothetically yes it could melt brain however what it really trying to be said is that, “Anyone who spends six hours a day in front of the box is at risk of dying five years soon than those who enjoy more active pastimes” Martin Beckford, a health correspondent for “The Telegraph”, claims. Researchers have said that actually watching television is just as bad as smoking or being overweight and that it should be seen as a public health problem. These experts claim that an hour of TV shortens your life by twenty-two minutes. Yet some might ask, how could this be possible? Should it not take an hour off of your life? Australian researchers say that the mortality outcomes, as a result of prolonged TV viewing time, caused by cardiovascular dysfunctions. Traumatic visual experiences put a lot of stress on the heart, which might cause the person to have a heart attack, or some other heart related, life-threatening injuries. These experiences could be a result of what society is telling viewers about the world around us.
The news is the biggest culprit of exaggeration. Majority of the news released for the public is actually completely taken out of proportion. News firms believe that making a small insignificant story that might be told every single day and “gelling” it up with so called experts and analyzers makes the television news much more entertaining. Who said watching the news had to be entertaining? People want to watch the news to understand what’s going on around them. They don’t want to be bothered with other useless information. Showing people stories, for instance, fatal car crashes, could be very riveting and explicit. It’s not that we don’t think the situation isn’t important but the ordinary human being doesn’t need to know about it if it doesn’t affect him or her. Not only that but the average person does not need to be traumatized by exaggerated stories. Some people watching could lose sleep over simple situations like this.
With all points considered, televisions affect on children, health and its coalition with news has shown to be negatively impacting people on a daily basis. The only way to control the problem is if we acknowledge that TV can be a problem and we have to have the self-control to restrain others and ourselves from further harm.