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Television

Television - good or bad? What do you think?

I love TV. I hate television. Sitting in front of a TV is great relaxation for me. I hate wasting my time away in front of a TV.

In my head it has been a battle for a long time. I suppose that it will stay that way, especially while I am responsible for raising children.

Its like Nuclear energy, good or bad? It's a tough call. Nuclear energy with no accidents and not used for bombs and used safely could prevent us from relying on fossil fuels, a major problem, but shall I say Chernobyl, or how about 3 mile Island, or how about the Russian nuclear sub that sank recently. These stories are still not yet over as the aftermath of these events will be with us in many ways for a long time.

Maybe the story on television isn't over yet either.

Television on its good days can replay a life coming into the world, show you a view you have never seen before, and can give you some wonderful comic and dramatic relief to allow us to escape from the daily rigors of our often robotic existences (I know, speak for myself).

What about the bad days? On a bad day, television can put 50 or more violent or abusive scenes in front of an unattended nine year old boy or girl. Day after day, what real impact do you think that these scenes will have on a young child? What kind of impact did it have on you? Are any of you out there affected in a bad way by the cumulative effects of television over time on our psyche? Do we really know?

I often have watched astounding things on television and have just been in awe of what I was seeing. I am talking about very positive things.

Sometimes I see things that alarm me and scare me when I realize that as I watch millions are watching and that can be an ominous feeling. Many of those millions will be young unattended children with no parent in site.

I am guilty. Throw away the key. I admit that I use the television too much, way too much as an easy place to set my children down to keep them busy when I might be interested in doing something else (like writing this article for you all to read).

I am proud though, that I am constantly the house warden as far as barking about the content on television when my young toddler is anywhere near the television. Ditto for my young teen and older teen.

I feel often that there is a battle in me. I feel this pull from the advertisers who actually strive to pull me away from my daily duties in life. Television costs money and time when you sit there or lay there and entertain yourself. You have to address the opportunity cost when watching TV. What is the benefit of whatever you are watching versus what you could be doing with that time elsewhere.

And what do you guys think about the way kids are targeted on television? The advertisers sure go after us when we are young, undoubtedly. Let me tell you what I think about this, and I hope some executive from some large fast food restaurant chain reads this and does something about it some day. I think it is just totally ludicrous that the fast food chains target kids by doing the whole current movie/small toys routine time after time. This is not a shining gem of capitalism and it is going worldwide as we adjust to the NEW worldwide economy. Are you with me? Hop in line, then!! I mean, come on, we're talking about the nutritious food intake concerns of our youth here. How about if we put all of that marketing money, used to publicize the current fastfood/movie/game frenzy into increasing the nutritional values of the food sold at these restaurants to our children. Marketing of this madness is not television's usage at its best.

Once I heard a late night lady talk show guest talking about the frame of mind that the mind goes into when you watch television. Her point was that you just kind of vegetate when you sit in front of a television.

If you ever watch somebody watching TV by facing them while they are watching, it can be a very peculiar study. Try this and you will kind of relate to what this lady was referring to.

This same lady discussed video games and talked about the fact that video games put one's mind in a different type of brain wave pattern that has actually been studied and determined to have a positive effect on one's motor abilities and thinking abilities. In other words, video games were not really zoning a kid out but television was.

To me, as a parent, I wonder if I should be steering my children to the video game console rather than the television set (lets keep the p-c out of this discussion for now, and cell phones). Do all of you parents out there feel that way. To me its like a guilt I have learned to live with; the constant weighing of whether my children are boob-tubing too much.

Do you think we get addicted to these things in some way? I do.

Although I focus on television here, the basic ability to take a moving picture of somebody and playing it back is what is the real zenith of technology here that is a rolling stone gaining moss (that's an old one, huh?).

Look at television today compared to years ago. Lets take a sporting event. Once we had just one camera covering an event, and then we had a couple, then a few, now who really knows how many cameras are covering a particular event. There is a kind of escalation and subsequent impact from this escalation, and I wonder where this is going to take us as a society.

I think if we look around, we will see the future unfolding for us regarding the next transgression of the "moving picture" technologies.

What about this proliferation of cameras hooked to the Internet? What about the rolling waves of security cameras and monitoring taking over our societies regarding security? How about the face and retina software recognition software sweeping the security world and our lives?

The ridiculous thing about the whole matter is that the cameras are getting smaller and the computers that are now used with these small cameras are also shrinking.

And I hate to tell you this if you didn't already know it, but there are heavy duty progressions going on right now within nano-technology fields involving very tiny cameras that can actually in essence fly through the air as small insect size devices. Was that a fly I just heard buzzing?

Hmmmm, and I started this discussion talking about televisions and its good and bad points.

I hope I get you to think about television and the time you spend in front of the set. If you are a parent, please monitor and limit the time that your kids spend in front of the television.

Well, sorry, I have to go now, the game is about to start.

copyrighted 2002 by jj namcap - Voices Network