Response: TV is bad!

A response to "TV Is Good for You: If you are a woman in rural india, at least" by Joel Waldfogel.

TV is BAD!!

                Television, a black rectangle screen that every now and then continuously changes motion pictures is presence at almost every single household. No one really remembers when television becomes a big part on the daily bases. According to Joel Waldfogel, watching television provided change in ideas of Indian women about life; such as the preference towards having a baby boy or getting beat up by their husband are reducing statistically. However, from my personal experience, I disagree with Waldfogel that television does more good than bad to the humanity. Televisions are time consuming, have bad effects on the children watching the program, and can become addicting. 

                Surely everyone has experienced the moment of time passing by very quickly without he or she noticing the time change. This happens a lot when watching television. One could always fix this habit by having a time limit for spending times in front of a television. However when the time limit is over, there will always be other entertaining programs that are coming up or on other channels. This can make one just keep lying in front of a television and just keep watching and surpassing precise time that would be better off spending on something else, like studies. Sometimes, the time felt like only five minutes have passed by but actually an hour have already passed!

                Addictions are always referring to drugs or alcohol. In this case, television watching and be addicting as well. When a lot of times are spent in front of a television at a continuous rate, one will start having addiction towards certain shows and programs. The perfect example is that I used to just wait for certain dramas and soap operas. Every day, I would be waiting for the next episode to come out. Even though that particular drama may have ended, there will always be the next one and the one after that. This shows the addiction to certain shows and programs continuing to become addicting to the audiences.

                Another negative effect of watching television is that if a child sees any show or even the advertisements, the child will automatically starts to copy the action shown. For example: my five years old sister, she always tries to copy and pretend that she is one of the characters in Pink Panther or in the dramas. Obviously, not every single character she tries to portray has positive behavior. Some of them, like the ones in the soap operas, have negative personalities. This is in a way inacceptable. Children are supposed to be like a clean white cloth but with television around that would be impossible.

                Television overall has more negative impacts than positive impacts. Even though according to Joel Waldfogel in “TV Is Good for You: If you are a woman in rural India, at least” the impacts of having a television maybe positive as well as helping women in rural India change their perspectives on things, it does not apply to the whole world. And as we can see it every day that television does more bad than good to every household.