Television Draft #3

In recent years, especially in the United States; laziness has become a growing epidemic. One of the causes of this "plague" is television, people have been extremely preoccupied with this form of entertainment so much so that it is currently the most time consuming activity in a child's life, other then sleeping. Teens on average watch 28 hours of T.V. a week. Children become so riveted by the special affects and fast paste action that school and academic learning become boring and no longer gain the attention they deserve. Television, today, detracts from the thinking process by distracting people from their responsibilities, it diminishes the search for information and the usefulness of this knowledge, and forms bad habits from an early age.


By placing special effects, romance, actions, and manipulating people's emotions television has come to draw people away from beneficial and necessary activities. Soap operas, sitcoms, and other shows spark curiosity, change electrical impulses in the brain and cause people to react in the way intended. By attracting curiosity and changing the electrical impulses in the brain television can put people in a hypnotic and addictive state, it does this by changing the frequency of electrical impulses causing a block for the mental process. The only way television could draw the population into this hypnotic state, is that hook, something that civilians relate to, that pleases them, and interests them; grabbing their recognition so that T.V. can consume the full attention of the viewer. In this hypnotic state impulses are created that allow the person to feel as if they are the ones experiencing what they are watching on T.V. Because of this addictive entertainment many people have veered off their intended paths and neglected important and essential duties. Students now spend six times the amount of time they spend on homework watching T.V., resulting in a decrease in the quality of work and standard grades. People have also been know to schedule their activities around their favorite programs decreasing the amount of time that could be reserved for more productive actions. By taking over the majority of citizen's time, they no longer have many opportunities to find and use information.

Basic skills and the knowledge of the application of those skills aren't developed with out practice and if the initiative hasn't been taken to understand and find new information. People no longer "have" the time to find and use information. Yes educational programs provide a lot of helpful knowledge, but what they do not do is provide an opportunity to apply this information into everyday life. People are also less able to concentrate on a tasks that don't grasp their attention by special effects and high tension situations, but provide useful information. Television has replaced leisurely reading and the development of more advanced motor skills. Reading helps expand the vocabulary and opens up a well of education in which to pull from. By detracting from this useful past time, the mental process is depleted. Thus through transitive, television detracts from the mental process. Television also detracts from the application of deductive reasoning, because this activity requires patients and slow persistence (which television doesn't promote in the least nor does it help the practice of this skill). In fact television doesn't promote many beneficial practices, which prove to be productive towards the general thinking process.

Television develops bad habits from an early age by nullifying the practices necessary to the development of young impressionable brains. Many children sit in front of the T.V. at an early age exposed to confusing scenes in an already foreign and difficult to understand world. These scenes only keep their attention by adding in high volume as well as bright and attractive lights, not interesting them in the actual content of what they are watching. Educational shows targeted for young age groups, i.e. Sesame Street, can be beneficial and help with the development of motor skills, yet in limited quantities. The most developmental activities which help young children are conversational activities. And if television pulls away from these helpful teachings motor, concentration, and listening skills will severely suffer. By watching T.V. children become more focused on visual representations and require big and loud actions to attract their attention, which makes it more difficult for teachers in the class room. Studies have also shown that people who watched less television as children ended up watching less in their future and as a result acquired much better grades and preformed at a higher quality in academic endeavors.

On a whole television severely detracts from educational processes, and pull away from mental activities. It attacks the body's defenses by adding in obtrusive auditory and visual stimulations as the body gets used to these attacks homework and other informational puzzles, especially as they increase in difficulty, become extremely frustrating to concentrate on. It is best to catch this addiction at an early age and limit the amount of time spent on T.V. so that the population can grow to its fullest.