While television has been somewhat harmful in its addiction. It has hardly “destroyed” communication among friends and family, although for some people, the statement that television has destroyed communication among friends and family seems pretty reasonable.
Television, invented in last century, with its wide availability, increasingly prosperous programs, has been turned to be widely spreaded in all over the world and become one of the most powerful means of communication and media in the history. Television is as much a part of our life as meals, work, school; Studies consistently show that the average American children spends as much time watching television as does he or she in school. We chronically see numerous films, continuous soap operas and humorous entertainment. We all have only 24 hours a day and it is clear that the more time we spend on watching television, the less time we do with our friends and family. Therefore, a lot people complain in the web forum that “the television took their girlfriends away”.
So perfect that such claim might be, it’s hardly true. Instead of television, it’s the increasing pressure that took their girlfriends away. Indeed, we have no definite evidence to say that people nowadays endure much more pressure than our counterpart in the past, but it is absolutely that we undergo enormous pressures that come from different aspects, including economy, school, emotion, career and so forth. Surveys demonstrate that someone who has an annual salary of RMB 50000 spends more than 60 hours on work per week, much more than those who earn RMB 20000 annually. Today a bachelor’ s degree may guarantee a decent pay, more and more companies require their applicants must have a master degree, which take them 3 year to obtain.
We find that people have little time for anything; television is just one of many other factors that affect our communication, and is surely not the only reason for degradation. It seems that the more education we get, the more one realizes television’ deleterious effects, and either deliberately avoid it or actually not like it. On the other hand, there really are many people addictive to television. But the fact is, if we don’t have television, we find other way to escape daily reality like gamble and alcoholism. There is a way that people can do what they want to do. Therefore I hardly agree that television has destroyed communication among friends and family.
