The Advantages and Disadvantages of TV
13152219 葛亚妍
Nowadays, television is playing an increasingly significant role in our lives and becomes more and more indispensable. However, in the meantime, people are being unsure whether it is good or not.
When it comes to television, the first word occurs to our mind must be amusement. Exactly, we could be relaxed when watching TV. And by watching TV, we can get a lot of information and always keep ourselves informed. At the same time, it contains a lot of programs, which are very instructive. They could introduce us to things we may never have thought of before or never have heard about before, which means it can add to our store of knowledge. And then thirdly, television can bring the world into our own home in sight and sound. There is no doubt that it is a splendid medium of communication. Since the launching of the first communications satellite, more and more programs are televised “live” from all over the world. Through advertising, television helps businesses and manufacturers sell their products to millions of persons. From another side, television has brought political campaigns closer to the voters than in former days. Furthermore, this machine influences the life of average people in many aspects, including our thoughts, our likes and dislikes, our speech, and even our dress. Besides, television has a tremendous apply in educational area. Educational TV stations offer teaching in various subjects ranging from home nursing to art appreciation. Many large schools and universities have “closed-circuit” television equipment that will telecast lectures and demonstrations to hundreds of students in different classrooms and the lecture can be put on video tape to be kept for later use. Some hospitals also use TV to allow medical students to get close-up view of operations. In addition, as an industry, TV provides jobs for hundreds of thousands who make TV sets and broadcasting equipment. It also provides work for actors, technicians, and others who put on programs. As an art, television brings the theater and other cultural events into the homes.
Although TV owns plenty of advantages, it has a lot of disadvantages either. The first drawback is that it can be a time waster and totally consumption to those who are not really considering what it is they're watching. And it is a danger when people are bored all they do and just turn on the TV. Because this kind of life would leave them with nothing to spare, nothing left. For the other thing, it could make us very passive if we sit for hour after hour and we tend to be very receptive and very unquestioning on everything. We become content with second-hand experiences and little by little, television cuts us off from the real world. We get so lazy and it prevents us from communicating with each other. Moreover, the box changes our life and we become more and more dependent on it. We rush home or gulp down our meals to be in time for this or that program. We have even given up sitting at table and having a leisurely evening meal, exchanging the news of the day. Food is left uneaten, homework undone and sleep is lost. Actually, we have already addicted to it. What’s worse, it seems to be a universal pacifier to children whatever the effect is. Apart from these, television consumes vast quantities of creative work. It makes a limit to the amount of creative talent available in the world. When millions watch the same programs, the whole world becomes a village, and society is reduced to the conditions which obtain in preliterate communities. In the end, we would become the primitive man who can only understand the two most primitive media of communication: pictures and the spoken word.