The Downside - the Bad Influence of TV

The TV has so many positives, as I had mentioned in my first blog entry regarding televisions, and they’re all undeniable. However, as with everything in life, it also has a negative side, known as the bad influence of tv.

One undeniable negative effect of the TV is that you can’t have a proper conversation with your spouse when he/she is watching the TV (which seems to be most of the time) because their eyes and ears seemed so toughly glued to the TV that they filter every other sound and sight other than that coming from the TV. It can be quite frustrating when it happens on a daily basis, and can be touted as one of the many reasons for the ever increasing divorce-rate.

Movies and shows on TV portray a wife/husband as being perfect, with no flaws in their character, and as a result, people will tend to expect their own spouse to be the same, and this lack of satisfaction with who the spouse is will result in a deterioration in the relationship.

The increasing availability of TV in many homes has spawned a generation of couch potatoes, whose only aim in life seems to be to compete in a TV watching marathon. Instead of enjoying the beautiful sunshine outside, or visiting friends, they seem to be wasting their lives on TV, which (with the exception of channels like Discovery, Animal Planet) seem to show nothing but things that tend to rot the brain more than doing any good.

The sheer number and variety of TV programs is starting to influence the behavior of children in a greater way than before. How many children start smoking at a very young age just because Johnny Depp does it? Some children go to the extent of commiting crimes such as murder, theft because in some programs, such activities are shown to be cool!

The amount of time we spend as a family has considerably decreased, mainly due to the TV. There seems to be a programme every day that someone considers that can’t be missed, no matter what happens. Lunch and Dinner, instead of being home-cooked, is being brought ready- made and dined in front of the TV, instead of on the dining table, where everyone can have a chat about what they did earlier in the day!

I have seen some kids who are unable to talk properly, even though they don’t seem to be having a physical disability or a mental block as such. The fact that they spend so much time on TV means that they barely spend any time talking with people, which means that their flow of speech tends to be very poor, and it will disable them severely as, when they get into higher position in companies in the future, they may have to make presentations, and their inability to communicate properly could become a serious hindrance to career progression.