FREE ESSAY ON EFFECTS OF TV ON SOCIETY

EFFECTS OF TV ON SOCIETY

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!