TELEVISION IN MODERN LIFE

How do people usually answer to questions like "What are you going to do tonight?" or "What are you doing at the weekend?" In other words, how do people spend their free time? Some twenty or thirty years ago the usual answers used to be:

"We're going to the theatre (or to the cinema)" or "We're going to a party" or "We're having some friends round". Now you very often hear "We're going to stay at home and watch the telly!" A first-rate colour TV set has become an ordinary thing in the household today, and a DVD player is quickly becoming one.

Modern television offers the viewers several programmes on different channels. In addition to regular newscasts you can see plays and films, operas and ballets, and watch all kinds of contests, quizzes, and sporting events. You can also get a lot of useful information on the educational channel. A good serial (perhaps, a detective story or a screen version of a classical novel) can keep the whole family in front of the telly for days, and don't we spend hours and hours watching our favourite football or hockey team in an important international event?

Television most definitely plays a very important part in people's lives. But is this a good thing or a bad one? Haven't we become lazier because of television? Don't we go out less often than we used to? Don't we read less?

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TV…could you be without it?

Ninety-eight per cent of us in Britain have a TV set in our homes and, according to the experts, we rarely turn it off. In fact, the average viewer watches as much 5 as 25/4 hours a week. Yet television still provokes controversy.TV does undoubtedly have its bad side. Whilst any links between on and off screen violence have yet to be proved, few could deny that seeing too much fictional brutality can desensitise us to real-life horrors.

Furthermore, even when programmes contain neither sex nor violence, it's not really a good thing for so many families to spend whole evenings glued to the box. Some primary school teachers are complaining of youngsters' inability to concentrate and their need to be constantly entertained. It would seem that too much TV is to blame.

Of course, it's not only children whose happiness can be affected by television, It can lead to the 'lodger' syndrome, where some husbands come home, flop down in front of the TV and simply don't communicate with their families at all. In some homes, soap operas have become a substitute for real life.

Yet there is another side to the picture. For the lonely, elderly or housebound, television can be a blessing, being a cheap and convenient form of entertainment and a 'friendly face1 in the house. It can be an ideal way to relax, without necessarily turning you into a square-eyed addict.

Television doesn't just entertain, of course. There are times when it can be informative and can provide a source of good family conversation. There is no evidence that other hobbies and interests have lost out, either. In fact, it seems that television has helped to popularise some games, like snooker and darts. And a final point. Over the past few years, television has played a crucial role in disaster relief. During the Ethiopian famine in 1984, the huge fund-raising so efforts of Band Aid might have had little impact without the heart-rending pictures we saw on our screens, or the world-wide link up of millions of viewers who donated money to the cause. Informative, useful, entertaining and relaxing - and yes, banal and boring - television is all of these. But if we're not selective, surely we have only ourselves to blame. TV can be part of family life, but when it becomes all of it, maybe that's the time to reach for the 'off” switch.

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Date: 2015-12-24; view: 2551