Most people would be amazed at how much TV they actually watch. Currently 98% of people in houses own a television, be it a huge plasma, an LCD or a rear projection TV and 84% of them have more than two TV sets in the house. This by itself is not surprising but people spend huge amount of time watching it, about 7 hours and 12 minutes for the average adult. One in four of people will fall asleep with the TV in, or someone else inside the household will. The following paragraphs explain some of the numerous effects that watching TV can have on us.
Watching TV can decrease the amount of communication within the family. This is because while the people sit down and watch they tune themselves out of the outside world so that only they and the TV exist. This affects the family because they are only focusing on the TV and are thus not talking to each other. It seems that dinner, once a family social time, has become interrupted by the coming of the TV. You wouldn't believe that statistically 66% of people watch TV while eating dinner and other meals.
TV can also control our actions. By the time a child is 18 the child will have witnessed violence on TV over 200,000 times and witnessed murder on TV about 16,000 times. If a young child sees this they may be influenced by the actions of that person and start hurting people, there are many cases of this. It also influences swearing as in almost every show after 7:30 will have swearing in one form or another.
The reason that we are ensnared when we watch TV is a result of our orienting response. This is a reflex that we once used to detect predators through movement in the bushes for example. But TV has the same effect because of the rapidly changing colours and contrast on the screen. So we may decide to watch one hour of TV but find ourselves captivated to It. Other examples of orienting response producers are computers and other game systems.
TV also lowers our attention span and ruins our imagination. The reason that it lowers our attention span is because we grow accustomed to short, quick bursts of information so in the long run it makes us annoyed if it takes someone a while to make a point. The reason that it lowers our imagination is because everything is portrayed for us in the TV screen without out us having to think much ourselves, however books do the opposite.
However there are some positive effects of TV, they can give us warnings and can also show us world events. They can educate us and humour us but there is also a shadow in TV as it can influence our actions. As Grouch Marx said “I find TV very educational, when someone turns it on I just go and read a book!”
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