If you were offered one million dollars to give up
television for life, would you do it? Interestingly, 1 in every 4 Americans
would not, reports the International Herald Tribune. According to a survey
commissioned by TV Guide magazine in 2012, half of those surveyed said they
would not give up TV for less than a million dollars. In contrast, 1 in 4 said
he was willing to quit TV for life for as little as $25,000. Most people said
they watched less TV than they did two years ago, but only 1 person in 8 felt
guilty about watching too much television.
Soon
after men learned to broadcast sound, inventors wondered if they could also
transmit live pictures. To appreciate the challenge, now consider how
television works today.
First, a TV camera focuses a scene onto a target device that
“reads” the picture, similar to the way you read print. However, instead of
scanning lines of letters on the page, it scans lines of spots (or pixels) in
the picture. It converts what it sees into an electronic video signal that can
be transmitted to another place. A receiver then converts the signal back into
a live picture.
In recent
times, television has become a veritable tool for influencing the minds of
youths and advanced once as well. Looking at the attention span given to
television on a daily basis, it is safe to say that on the average, television
viewership is a virus, a deadly virus at that, which has substantially aided
the epidemic of obesity in the United States and other developed countries.
Nigeria could be said to have partially evaded this television epidemic majorly
because of our N.E.P.A problem (LOL)
What are the
negative effects of television? Some may argue that television and movie
violence may not be taken literally by children and that all those horror
movies are having no effect on them. “In that case,” commented a British
newspaper, “why did a school authority in America’s mid-west have to tell
thousands of children that there were no Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the
local storm drains? The tiny Turtle fans had been crawling into the drains to
look for them, that’s why.”
The magazine
U.S.News & World Report stated: “In 1991, the three [U.S.] networks
displayed more than 10,000 sexual incidents during prime time; for every scene
depicting sexual intercourse between married partners, the networks showed 14
scenes of sex outside marriage.” By showing over 9,000 incidents of illicit sex
during prime time in one year, what would you say television is teaching? Barry
S. Sapolsky, who coauthored the report “Sex in Primetime Television: 1979
Versus 1989,” states: “If an adolescent watches years of TV where people engage
in flirtatious or explicit behavior, these thousands of images over the years
will teach them that sex is pleasant—and without any consequences.
Some say that television has been the most
influential medium of the 20th century. A writer commented: “While some people
critique its content, no one debates television’s power.” But television is no
better than the individuals who produce the programs. So along with its power
to influence for good, it has power to influence for bad. While programs of
shallow content, filled with violence and immorality, have given some people
what they want to see, such programs failed to improve human relationships and
too often worsened them.
Neil Postman, in
his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, mentions another danger, saying: “The
problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but
that all subject matter is presented as entertaining…No matter what is depicted
or from what point of view, the overarching presumption is that it is there for
our amusement and pleasure”. In truth not all programs are entertaining, for
many pose great dangers to the psyche or mental frame of the youths and older
ones alike.
The resolution
for today’s youths should be the dumping of the ugly habit of idly ‘surfing’
random T.V stations with little or no predisposition to a particular T.V
program. Another idea is the imbibing of reading culture, in actual sense
reading should not be centered on academics alone; rather, omnivorous reading
should be adopted among youths. Furthermore, viewing of T.V stations should be
limited to mostly educative and inspirational programs. Youths are now
challenged to developing good communication skills with their neighbors as well
as brain tasking.
What are the
positive results of these policies? First, one reduces health danger of obesity
and fatigue when he or she is proactive, also the intelligence quotient
improves as the brain stores up useful information and is regularly tasked, in
conclusion, this DIGITAL FRAME called ‘Television’ is a powerful tool given to
us by the ingenuity of minds of the 20th century, we are behooved to use this
gift as a force for good to ourselves and neighbors, through disciplined use.
Some of the info used are from the*watchtower library,
*university of Benin Main library, BBC bulletins 1990
By
Essay Palmer
thank you nky
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