Television

Television has come a long way, from only a few channels with no color to over 200 channels with high definition, color and for some televisions, 3D. It has come so far that it is now a part of our everyday lives. For example, (Herr 2007) according to the A.C. Nielsen Company, the average American watches more than four hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). If you think about it, watching television four or more hours a day is entirely too many hours dedicated to watching television. I believe that we should cut down on our TV hours and become more focused on other important things.

Even though statistics say that the average American watches more than four hours of TV each day, I can be proud to say that I do not fit into this statistic. In my house I rarely watch TV because my parents do not like my siblings and me watching TV while we have other things we can be doing. Every once and a while, they let us watch TV, but the point is that we rarely watch TV.  What we do instead are things like reading a book, doing our homework, or something else. That means we have more time to do other things instead of wasting time watching TV.

Television can be addicting because I too have been a victim of watching TV for a long time without my parents around. So, I understand that it could be hard to lower the hours of television that you watch. The thing is, you can do so much more stuff instead of watching that four or more hours of television a day. Think about it. If you cut down to watching only one to two hours of television each day, you would have more free time. If you noticed that you never had time for homework because you watched that much TV, you then would have time dedicated to your homework and you would have it done.

I believe that Americans should think about their choices more in life because watching TV for that long can be a very unhealthy choice. If you just sit in your house watching TV, you lose that certain opportunity because you are not out of your house doing something productive. You are just sitting in your chair or couch or stool absorbing all the reality shows and cartoons that basically get you nowhere. You might argue that you learn something from National Geographic or Discovery channel, but how long do you watch it? Do you really learn as much on the TV than the outside world where you have opportunities for hands on learning? I know for a fact that I do not learn anything valuable from the TV from what I have watched.

In conclusion, we should become more responsible with watching TV and find something more productive to do. It is very time consuming and does not help us with the opportunities we might be faced with in life. Do you think you can just handle an hour a day? It does not hurt to try.

Bibliography

Herr, Norman “Television and Health” Internet Resources to Accompany The Sourcebook for Teaching Science 2007, October 07, 2010 <http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html>.