How does Television affect our lives? It can be very helpful to helpful to people who carefully choose the shows that they watch Television can increase our general knowledge of the outside world; are high quality programs that help us understand many fields of study, science, medicine, the arts and so on. Moreover, television benefits very old people, who can’t often leave the house as well as patients in the hospitals. It also offers non- native speakers the advantage of daily informal language practice. They can increase their vocabulary and practice their listening.
On the other hand, there are several serious disadvantages of television. Of course, it provides us with a pleasant way to relax and spend our free time, but in some countries, people watch the “boob tube” for an average of six hours or more a day. Many children stare at television screen for more hours each day than they do anything else, including studying and sleeping. It’s clear that the tube has a powerful influence on their lives and that its influence is often negative.
Recent studies shows that after only thirty seconds of television, a person’s brain ‘relaxes’ the same way that it does just before the person falls asleep. Another effect of television on the human brain is that it seems to cause poor concentration. Children who view a lot of television can often concentrate on a subject for only fifteen to twenty minutes. They can pay attention only for the amount of time between commercials.
Another disadvantage is that television often causes people to become dissatisfied with their own lives. Real life does not seem as exciting to these people as the lives of actors on the screen. To many people, television becomes more real than reality and their own lives seem boring. Also many people get upset or depressed when they can’t solve problems in real life as quickly as television actors seem to. Before a child is fourteen years old, he or she views eleven thousand murders on the tube. He or she begins to believe that there is nothing strange about fight, killings and other kinds of violence. Many studies show that people become more violent after certain programmes. They may even do the things that they saw in a violent show.
The most negative effect about the “boob-tube” might be people’s addiction to it. People often feel a strange and powerful need to want television even when they don’t enjoy it. Addiction to a television screen us similar to drug and alcohol addiction. People almost never believe they are addicted.
Published: February 19, 2008
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