TV : "Could you do without it?"
"I wish the badass would get shot by the police today," yelled granny. "Let's call it a day now. It's 8.30 and I have my drama to catch," cried my younger sister. One common issue that most people are facing thanks to the inanimate rectangular box that hypnotized almost every member of a household that owns a television. Before the 1980's, checking up for information may be as hard as finding a needle in the sea, however, after the introduction of television, it has now become not only a source of information but also a source of entertainment. From breaking news to drama and also documentaries, it plays such a significant role in people's daily lives that it is impossible to imagine not having a television. People can both get advantages and disadvantages from the television depending on how they plan to utilize it. I personally believe I have no necessity to make television part of my life since the cost of having one, outweighs the benefits that I could get from it. There are three predominant reasons to it, which are: costs of money, time wastage and poor creativity.
Monetary costs are inevitable when it comes to television. As time goes by, the television that was once in black and white screen now comes in HD (high definition) retina screen display with variety of sizes. Due to the fact that contemporary televisions now have better design and qualities, the cost is also proportionally higher. This can be seen when you visit any television outlet, the typical price for a flat screen television may cost up to $3500. Even after having the television, there are still more to pay. For example, to access to movies, I will have to pay monthly subscription fees that may cost up to $120/month. Besides that, the amount of DVD, Blu-Ray discs that I rent from rental shops and also fancy ancillary items such as the DVD player, surround sound system, adapters, or even 3D glasses may summed up to $4000 or more. Instead of the television, I could actually get all these benefits at a lower price, approximately $60/month by surfing the Internet and getting a decent computer.
On top of that, productive time is wasted when watching television. This statement is heard over and over again, but yet, many of us still opt to sit down on the couch watching television just for the sake of passing off time. According to the research done by the A.C Melsen Co., "An average person watches more than 4 hours of television each day, 28 hours weekly and by the age of 65, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the television." Based on my personal experience, my assignment that could actually be done in 2 hours, took me 5 hours before completing it due to the distraction caused by the television. As a result, I spent 3 extra hours to have my assignment done.
Last but not least, which I think is the most important, creativity. Many researches have shown that, in relation to people and the viewing of television, a negative impact is caused, resulting in heavy influence to the viewer cognitively, limiting both perception and imagination. Relating it to my personal experience, during the act of watching television; I passively sit down in front of the television, absorbing only images shown on the television like a zombie. Unlike moments where I have books on my hand, reading it makes me generate my own mental images based on the story. Even the famous British novelist, Roald Dahl's poem from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" states that, "It kills the imagination dead!" and children's "powers of thinking rust and freeze!" In short, I would say by only watching, we are not thinking. Therefore, our creativity does not belong to us but to what we have witnessed from the television.
In a nutshell, having television will cost me my money, time and also creativity. Rather than allowing the television to have control over my life, I am glad that I have liberated myself from the need to rely on television. Not having a television means more time and freedom to be spent with my friends and family and also, to explore all different aspects life have to offer. As the saying goes, "Learn to appreciate what you have before time teaches you what you had." Spending time and learning how to live life fully is better than being a slave to the television.
From Seonyoung Hwang to Chanlan Hong
ReplyDelete1. What I like about your writing is that you tried to support your main point as specific as possible. I saw you quoted a research result and your own experience as well as numbers and these contributed your writing to be more reliable.
2. Your main point seems to be television is not a helpful device for your money, time and creativity.
3. I personally enjoyed your last quotation 'Learn to appreciate what you have before time teaches you what you had' because I sometimes feel that I take things around me granted.
4. I'm quite not sure how your quotation of 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' connects with your opinion that TV hinders us from generating creativity.
5. Your writing overall is well written and has strong support ideas. A brief comment though is that it'd be much greater if you make your examples more concise. To be specific, when you gave an example of how expensive to own a TV and other ancillary items, you may make these sentences into one or two sentence(s) instead of mentioning each part respectively.
1. What I like about your writing is introduction and the way you ended your essay. Your introduction helps me to understand the whole essay. Your conclusion is strong, espescially the part you called the person in front of a TV as a 'slave'.
ReplyDelete2. Your main point seems to be that TV itself is just a tool and for you, it has no merit.
3.I think your examples about the cost of enjoying TV has an error and too extreme. If you want to compare the cost of TV and PC, you should use same condition on those. If you want to enjoy 3d mode, other luxurious tools and etc, PC costs a great deal of money too. Furthermore, I did not understand why did you exclude the cost of PC itself and wrote only maintenance fee for enjoying entertainments. In general we don't need plazma TV or flat screen for watching TV. Espescially for students like us, the TV cost is, at the most, around 100$ is enough.
4.Your writing was interesting. It is quite wrong compared to other students' writing, but it had great hook and I enjoyed it while reading. Except for examples about the cost of TV, I agreed your opinion. Thank you.