2017-12-16
1000
Television:
-children’s viewing habits have changed; now they are allowed to watch right up to their bedtime. But there’s a notional watershed at 9 p.m. fixed by BBC and IBA, after which more violent and intimate scenes can be shown.
-parents exercise little or no control over their children’s viewing, they throw the onus on to the programme-makers, which is both cowardly and irresponsible.
-television has profoundly undermined society’s traditional values and standards, it’s become a drug of choice for an increasingly fast and self-occupied world, traditional family activities have disappeared, participation in local affairs and community life has collapsed and a damaging cult of “get-out-of-my-face” isolationism has taken hold.
Detrimental effect of TV
-TV has stripped away much of people’s gregarious nature, demolished the social fabric and common interests
-cocooned in their world people no longer know their neighbors, friends or even families, TV’ s made communities wider and shallower, people don’t socialize and don’t care, display only a tangential interest in life outside their living rooms.
-the society is enslaved by TV and it can no longer function in a normal, cooperative way
-TV has dammed the natural flow of human contact that builds friendship, people don’t trust one another because they simply don’t know one another as much, they become suspicious, skeptical, inept and inclined to think the worst of others.
-families don’t buy books, they prefer to watch moronic movies instead
- TV has privatized and individualized people’s leisure time, disrupting the opportunity for social contact
And if a child lives in such a family that doesn’t share any human values it’s easy to guess in what way TV can influence him.
But at the same time everything depends on the family itself and how this family brings up their child, what kind of programmes it allows the child to see and the quality of such programmes. In that case TV can have a positive influence on children. There won’t be any increase in antisocial behavior and this in its turn will contradict the commonly held belief that TV encourages children to imitate the violent behavior that they see on screen. For sure children don’t fail to learn aggressive behaviors from TV but at least such behaviors won’t be practiced.
(Here parents play an important role in providing social support or social control, it’s also necessary if parents inculcate in their strong sense of community and social responsibility).
Newspapers: if they influence young people’s opinion or merely pander to it?
Very often the newspapers proprietors carry only about money, they don’t care what message his paper peddle to the public and especially young people but only what profits they make. In large popular newspapers they concentrate far more on entertaining their readers rather than on either informing or influencing them.
