JOURNAL 2

                                 

        TV SCATTERS YOUR TIME

One of the ways many people choose to relax and have fun is watching TV. There are  more than one TV in almost all houses today. In our country, a number of people watch 3.7 hours of TV per day according to the research of Radio and Television Supreme Council ‘Tendency To Watch Television-3’ . However, this common and indispensable habit has some negative effects on the viewers. Hence, the time spent in front of TV should be reduced to put down these adverse effects

Excessive TV watching  harms people socially.  Firstly, the violance showed on TV has some bad effects on people especially on children. The head of Radio and Television Supreme Council Prof. Dr. Davut Dursun stated that a 14 year old child sees approximately 100.000 violation acts and 8.000 death scenes for his/her life. Exposed to this severeness so much, it is not an abnormal thing for them to resort to use violence. Secondly, because of the time excessively spent on TV , people may not find time for socialization. The relationship between the members of a family may be damaged. Instead of other good habits like reading, dancing or doing sports, people reduce quaility of their time.

I strongly believe that the worst thing  about TV is indoctrination. The news and other TV programs generally mislead people.  Partisans try to impress their own ideas on the viewers and TV is the easiest way to mold watchers brains into whatever the Government wants, making them incapable of thinking for themselves.. Partisan media  brainwashes TV watchers with news and other programs so that they lose their own ideas and start to think like they hear from people on TV. Thus, people  pick up behaviour and ideologies from what they watch, and it alters the way they think. Spending  hours in front of a tube, our minds become little more than a recording machine waiting for imprints.

Spending so much time in front of TV also harms people phsically. One of the biggest illness is increasing obesity among people who consume large amounts of unhealthy foods such as chips and soft drinks while watching TV. According to the article ‘Television Watching and “Sit Time”’ published by Harvard University ,  television causes obesity risk, and reducing screen time is an important target for obesity prevention. Secondly, sitting a long time motionlessly  also damages immune system. Deterioration of eyesight may occur  and excessively watching TV leads to some sleeping problems like imsomnia.

Some people may argue that watching TV is good for people. Supporters of this view may say that  television does not have a negative impact on people because everyone chooses to watch a show whether it is appropriate or inappropriate, yet I should say that it does not always work like that. For example, while we watching television, we are exposed to advertisements and, as we all know, advertising sector is not under the control of watchers. Some people also say that television may be used for teaching. As Nicholas Johnson said, “All television is educational television. The question is: what is it teaching?”. People learn violance, immorality, and strong desire to consume etc.. These are what television teaches us.

To  sum up, watching too much TV is bad for people obviously. They should put a limit to time they spent on TV to minimize the harmful impacts. Instead  of sitting on a machine all day, you can do more beneficial things like reading, painting or travelling. There are  some lists like ‘100 things to do instead of watching TV’ on the internet. I strongly recommend you to look at them.