Preview

Watching Television Has Adverse on Children and Should Be Restricted. Do You Accept This View? Give Reason for or Against This Preposision

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1138 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Watching Television Has Adverse on Children and Should Be Restricted. Do You Accept This View? Give Reason for or Against This Preposision
Personally, our family has a television. We don’t think it’s evil. Together, we enjoy watching movies, quality TV shows, and occasionally the news.
But it’s not on by default, and it’s definitely not our main method of entertainment. For the past three years living overseas, we haven’t received a TV signal, so our television set was reserved solely for watching DVDs.
Now that we’re back in the U.S., we get a minimal amount of channels (just your basic networks and public broadcasting), and it’s on about an hour per day, on average.
This isn’t meant to sound holier-than-thou, as though anything less than that makes someone a bad parent. I’m simply saying that we’ve discovered that it’s honestly not that hard to not depend on television as though it’s the shrine of the living room.
In the household where I grew up, TV was on by default, and I admittedly watched quite a bit (though I still somehow managed to read a ton and come out rather non-addicted to TV). Soon after I moved out of my parents’, I noticed how much I loved the sound of… nothing. That the blare of television didn’t have to constantly be on. I knew I wanted that as the default in my own home.
My husband and I are content with the balance we’ve found in our family; that we use the TV as a tool in our home for both entertainment and education, but it’s not an idol or an addiction.
Yet we know it can easily fall prey to the role of major time-sucker and energy waster. It’s important to remind ourselves continually why it’s a great idea to not always watch TV.And that there are plenty of other things to do.
Here are my favorite reasons.

1. Watching TV correlates with poor health, weight gain, and low energy levels. Photo by Caryn Werner
It’s no secret — being a couch potato contributes to a lot of our current culture’s weight gain and poor health. I was surprised by some of the statistics I unearthed when I did research on this for my upcoming book. According to the U.S. Center for Disease

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Is T.V. Really The Enemy?

    • 643 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Is T.V. the root of all our family problems? In Television: The Plug-In Drug, the author Marie Winn believes just that. She argues that television was beneficial in bringing the family together back when it first came out, but now that every family has an average of two television sets, everyone watches it in a separate room, not connecting with their kin during pivotal moments like dinner or holidays. Instead of laughing, singing, and eating together, families sit in peace, away from each other mentally, and sometimes physically. Parents enjoy the quietness of a couple without children and don’t take proper care of their offspring through communicational stimulation, and children mind their own business, quietly soaking up the information that television hands to them.…

    • 643 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The television was a device that was thought to bring families closer. However, in recent years the idea can be debunked as an old wives tale. In Marie Winn's book the Plug-In Drug she addresses how television/electronics have actually driven families apart. This topic is specifically covered in her chapter “Family Life”. Winn makes observations which open our eyes to what electronics can actually do to families.…

    • 1256 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The insight provided by Barbara Ehrenreich is probably the sort of thing nobody would ever expect to hear--to the American audience, television is superior, all-knowing, and as time-consuming as sleep. In the twenty-first century at present, television has evolved internally, externally, and culturally. There is high-definition programming that supposedly increases the experience of watching, digital video recorders that allow people to set aside time to watch their favorite shows when they please, and remote controls that probably have Easy Bake Ovens should one decide to look hard enough. This is not to say that all television is necessarily a bad experience (what with National Geographic, the History Channel, and news programming on every other station), but for the most part, it has come to exist for the sole purpose of entertainment.…

    • 671 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Tv Essay

    • 415 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Ellen Goodman explains how TV affects families in a negative way by using harsh words to emphasize that TV destroys families. She explains through “Primal Screen” that the fact people watch TV is an “addiction” and “the average kid develops that distant, slack-jawed, hypnotic, hooked stare…” (Goodman, 25-26). This explains how kids take TV too seriously in life and take it as a major priority in life. Also, they young kids would create a very bad addiction out of it. Kids in school might not do well because all they think about is TV and get distracted. Another example would be when Goodman states that families have “become an audience and not a family,” (Goodman, 28)”. This means that families sit around a TV and communicate rarely if possible. Families just sit around and ignore each other when the traditional belief of TV is to have family time.…

    • 415 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Tv: the Plug-in Drug

    • 489 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Television for many people, serves as an aid to relaxation. When the kids come home from a long day at school, Mom comes home from the nursing home, and Dad comes home from selling insurance to extremely rude clients all day, everyone looks forward to the chance to escape the burden of “real life”. Of course, there are channels that don’t completely ruin a person mentally, for example, the news. However, television is mainly entertainment. Watching Channel 7 News report that a man shot up a school full of small children isn’t exactly the last thing someone wants to see or hear before they go to bed. Moreover, watching something like Spongebob taking his driving test and failing it over and over, driving Mrs.Puff insane, gives the family a good laugh. Watching a beloved show, gives everyone a chance to spend quality time together before dealing with the exhausting tasks that come with the following day.…

    • 489 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    I agree with Dr.Grohol about becoming sedentary from watching too much TV, which can cause many health problems. I do believe that we need to turn off the TV and go outside like we have in the past. Time Health on “Watching TV: Even worse for your kids than you think,”…

    • 529 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    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.…

    • 623 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    There only a few families among millions that do not have a TV set in their homes for various reasons such as financial incomes, disinterest on television, fear for their children getting distracted, etc. But for the other portion a television is still a very important part of their lives. Many people gather around the TV after work or after a long day and enjoy some minutes in front of it whether it is watching the news of the day or simply watching a movie.…

    • 531 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    TV lets relax to something interesting. Reading the paper is another way, but you don't find as much interest in a paper as you do in TV. Or listening to the radio in the “ seashells “ that are stated in the book Fahrenheit 451. Not as effective. Without TV, we wouldn't be brought to the amazing world TV is. But yes, it can be bad too. It can make us lazy, sure. It can make us bored, and unemployed ( but we don't want that now do we? ) but that's now I treat TV. In the book, Fahrenheit 451, you're put in the future where there is a minimum speed limit rather than a maximum speed limit, and everybody just watches TV, rather than talking, or visiting with family. Or even visiting with friends. Everybody uses the little “ seashells “, or in our case earbuds/in-ear-headphones to listen to music and the radio. Using them drowns out the speaking to each other part, and sort of ruins communication between us. Some people do this today to.…

    • 902 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Now and days, television isn’t as few and far as it used to be. Over half of America’s population has a television set in their home, and 66 percent of those homes own more than one television set. Obviously there has been a large jump between 1953 when less than half of the population owned a T.V. to now where almost 99 percent of Americans own at least one. There has been much advancement in the television set as well. No longer do we have bulky sets that take up half of a room. There are many small sized options now, such as hanging them on the wall, or Plasma screen Television sets that are slimmer in size then regular standing sets. There have also been many advancements in what is being broadcasted as well as the changes in the sets themselves. The past’s three television stations have…

    • 1314 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The television was first introduced in America in the late 1940’s. As it was introduced Americans purchased televisions as a record rate, in fact more quickly then they had purchased any other home entertainment machine. In a book written by Lynn Spigle stated “Between 1948 and 1955, television was installed in nearly two-thirds of the nation’s homes and the basic mechanism of the network oligopoly was set n motion” (pg. 1) and “by 1960 almost 90 percent of American household had at least one receiver”(pg. 1) As television became a new sort of gathering place it had positive and negative effect in families. One of the positive effects is that the television in many ways made the poorest of families rich in term of their access to entertainment and news. TV has also made childbearing less burdensome since TV can be a great babysitter and time filler. On the other as wealth of a person increases, so does the number of television found in a house making it hard for a family to interact with each other since each member would just retreat to their own personal space making this a negative effect.…

    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Tv as a Shaper

    • 1300 Words
    • 6 Pages

    I agree that television shows influences our behaviors even without our knowledge of it. Although television seems like a great thing to have, it has many drawbacks. Television can have negative impacts on people, especially kids. People learn new skills by observing, then utilizing it, such as when we were kids and learn to walk by seeing our family walking around or learning a new subject in school. Therefore, when watching television it may influence our fundamental social dispositions; no matter if it is good or bad. Almost ninety nice percent of households possess one television. Television is today’s source of news, stories, legends, and characters from previous centuries; the reason why it is so influential. However, only “0.7 percent is used for public service announcements and news”(Sex, violence, profanity...). The other 97.3 % consists of television shows with violence, crime, advertisements and mainstream blandness. Many studies and research has been done to demonstrate that heavy television viewing may lead to serious health consequences. Television is great for entertainment but has grown into a major problem.…

    • 1300 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Impact Of The Television How may hours a day, a week, a year, do you spend watching television? Everyone enjoys his or her fair share of TV—it’s relaxing, and provides the occasional leisure time. The technology of television has been a recent phenomenon that is arguably one of the most influential innovations of the 20th century. Television may have had a rough start, but nowadays it is a constant presence in a vast amount of American lives. Once a luxury item, TV’s can currently be found in nearly every home in America.…

    • 807 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Television has been a fixture of American culture for more than 60 years.” (Minnesota Health Department, 2014) From black and white to color, from large box televisions to thin, to smart televisions, they have now. America’s televisions has changed and so have American’s relationship with television.…

    • 1255 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The family time that experts once believed the television would facilitate has backfired. It has been replaced with an everyday military regiment. Wake up, go to school, watch television, and go to bed. Parents have allowed the television to become the primary source for their children’s home life experience. Although this medium allows for peace within the home, the family dynamic suffers. Winn references the conflicts that family’s had to deal with, prior to the multi-television home, is an essential part in family life (233). The home has become another form of a care taking institution rather than an accumulation of memory making experiences that can and will follow the children into their adulthood.…

    • 504 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays