Television addiction Awareness
Alyse Cristina Ellis
10/28/2010
The University of Texas at El Paso
The TV has evolved tremendously throughout the decades. The likelihood of having a television twenty years ago was reasonably common. In the present the likeliness of not having a TV is extremely unheard of. Every time you drive home at the end of your day, the familiar bluish glow from windows of houses probably don’t phase you. As far as you’re concerned your only worry is how long it will take you to get home to watch your favorite show.
According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube. Research has been done to measure things that come along with this new influence. These influences include: violence, language, commercialism, and other things. It’s astonishing to think by just watching a certain show your thoughts and actions can be altered in the future. Although we know majority of things on TV are not true or even realistic, beings continue to allow what they see to influence their future actions. The saying, “Monkey see, Monkey do” defiantly defines new heights after the research has been brought to my attention. Thus why are we so glued to this potential addiction?
However, have you ever noticed just how many of those windows portray this familiar glow? The stats, according to http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html, state 99% of households in America possess a television. Of those 99% a stunning 66% of Americans possess over three televisions. The number of hours of TV watched annually by Americans is 250 billion hours! If you were to be paid to watch this amount of TV at $5/hr. you income annually would be $1.25 trillion. Considering these numbers it’s obvious we spend majority of our spare time in front of a TV set. Man has become more and more dependent on media to familiarize with the outside world. In the past everyone relied on each other for news and important information. Now we rely mainly on the TV.
When researched the influence of TV on children the statistics are shocking. They not only analyzed the number of hours in school to the number of hours watching TV, but they also discovered in relation to violence how TV influences the community. The website, to http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html, says that the hour per year the average American youth spends in school is approximately 900 hours. Similarly the hours per year that the average American youth watches television is 1500 hours. This easily illustrates how at very young ages were accustomed to the TV. It’s also obvious that everything we watch isn’t always SpongeBob, or the Disney channel. So it’s logical to assume what we watch for nine years of our life has an influence on our actions. For example, children who watch adult shows, such as the history channel or Sci-Fi, may become more educated historically. As well as scientifically using this new knowledge in future circumstances to overcome an obstacle. However, when these educational channels are replaced with degrading violent shows it reasonable to assume that in a situation a child will use this new knowledge to surpass a problem. Majority believing that if it worked on TV its ok in the real world. The number of murders seen on television by the time a child finishes elementary school (about eleven years of age) is about 8,000. In relation to these murders seen, 79% of Americans believe TV violence helps precipitate real life mayhem. Now by the age of eighteen the average American has seen over 200,000 violent acts on TV. It’s been proven that teen violence has gone up due to its advertisement on TV. To be fair video games have influenced young Americans as well. Regardless it’s all thorough media that the negative acts have raised to an all-time high.
In a different light, commercials are also majority of what we see. These commercials are a huge reason to why we buy, eat, and consume certain things. From everything to a new toy on the market, or the newest restaurant in town. Commercials are the most efficient way to make known of whats available to the community. Of course because again, it’s given to know majority of people will see the commercial because of how much time we spend watching the tube. The number of 30- second commercials seen in one year’s period by an average child is about 20,000. Similarly the number of TV commercials seen by the average person by the age 65 is over 2 million! In relation to children the number of commercials aimed at children to make then more materialistic is estimated at 92%. These statistics were again provided by http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html.
Over all the television at first brought a new way to communicate and familiarize with our world. However, in time it’s proving to overwhelm our communities with false impressions of our world. Slowly our cultures are dying out due to this lack of physical activity. Our dependence on media is overcoming the way we function and proving to result in our actions. To regain order little by little communities need to turn off our TVs and interact with each other. Like in past time we have to rely on physical communication amongst ourselves to gain knowledge.
REFRENCE:
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