Is Television Detrimental?

Television is just another part of technology keeping us from viewing the world and living our lives as we should. Instead of coming out of our house and taking on any challenge the world might have for us, we easily give up to our laziness, which quickly makes us grab the bag of chips, the soda, and sit down. Even though I am one of the many people who just loves to have the remote by their side, I strongly believe that television is nothing but detrimental to our society. Watching television might seem like an easy and fun way to kill our time, but is time the only thing it kills? For instance, “Unfortunately, our old friends greed and sloth entered the picture and transformed it into a 24-hour ad-plastered, brainwashing, individuality bleaching, stereotyping, couch-potato making tool of society” (Corbett Trubey). Television is clearly considered the best source of entertainment we all have; however, sitting on a couch brings nothing but a lazy habit to most of us. That lazy habit is what keeps us coming back for more entertainment but once we’re being entertained, we don’t realize the addiction. The strong addiction we have towards television kills more than time, it internally kills the viewers. The way they think slowly changes. Having the television right in front of us leaves us with no other choice than to watch it. The moment we decide to turn the TV on and select a channel, we simply shut our brain down. For instance, “You no more challenge your mind by watching these intelligent shows than you challenge your body watching Monday Night Football” (Steven Johnson). Once we are in front of the television, all we can think of is, well, nothing. Most people are so caught up with the show that they don’t even realize the real situations surrounding them. We often tend to use television as a probe to escape reality. Television shows are far from being as real as the world. “ There’s a big, beautiful world out there, and not even the widest TV screen or the sweetest Animal Planet documentary can compare to the real view” ( Corbett Trubey ). Viewers easily get encouraged to do things they hear on television. Join the Army, buy Gillette, switch to AT&T. Some people are able to use what their brain has left and ignore all these advertisements while others decide to use Gillette as soon as they see Derek Jeter using one. Or, they switch to AT&T but quickly end up finding out that it sucks just as much as their former company did. All these programming and ads tell you all the good things about their products but there are people who are just dumb enough to not realize it. “Watching TV is a lot like smoking. People know all the crummy effects and continue to do it anyways” ( Ronald Bailey ). You will occasionally come to a point where you start questioning whether TV is good or bad for you. Most likely, you will conclude that it is a bad thing. However, no matter how hard you try to keep yourself from watching it again, you certainly can’t stop. All the comedy, all the drama, everything a show offers, it will just make us wonder about future shows and because of that, we continue to watch. Television kills many things in our life. It kills years, cells, and knowledge. In this case, we can easily revive ourselves by putting an end to this continuous action. I am not saying we should not watch television at all, but one thing we can definitely do is reduce the time we spend in front of it.