Can you imagine coming home from a rough day and not being able to watch television? Or not having the ability to watch your show to find out what happens next, like who A is or who won the MTV Movie Awards? In modern society, television has become a daily part of our lives. According to Daily News, the average 18 year-old American watches 22 hours and 27 minutes of T.V. per week. This number does not include time being on a smartphone or using computers to watch shows on Netflix. Although this addicting entertainment box keeps the eye’s of it’s audience glued to a small screen for most of the day, it has proven to be beneficial to society as well as detrimental. Television has our eyes glued to a box for multiple hours at a time, leading to people becoming anti-social and altering the reality of society, however it has also evolved to engage our minds while being entertained.

Television is often portrayed as detrimental to society and harmful to the mind’s of children. But this is not completely true. It does have its perks. One thing gained by watching television is that it makes people “more likely to be dependent on and support authority to ensure their safety.” As stated by George Gerbner, in the piece Is Media Violence Free Speech?, those violent shows accused of making violent people, can actually scare people into losing trust in those around them. By being so afraid that the actions depicted in violent films will happen to them, they rely on authority and support having stronger security to ensure their safety. Without being scared, there are many Americans who resist and rebel against authority because it “restricts their freedom.” It is not only violent motion pictures that have a positive impact on society, but T.V. shows as well. In Watching T.V. Makes You Smarter, Steven Johnson analyzes how watching shows, such as 24, effects the mind. Throughout this article he explains how these shows engage the audience’s mind to think about the story. Over time storylines of television shows have evolved in complexity to force the audience to think harder and enhance our “cognitive faculties.”

Although television is constantly being improved, it still has its downfalls. In the article The Argument Against T.V., by Corbett Trubey, it shows how television has caused teenagers to slack in history, but have become knowledgeable in subjects like pop culture. If you go up to a teenager they could probably tell you everything you need to know about music or movies, yet when asked a history question, the answer will probably not be known. In survey done by Corbett Trubey, 75% of teenagers aged 13-17 could tell you where to find the zip code 90210, but not even 25% of those teenagers knew where the Constitution was written. This shows that although we are absorbing what we learn from entertainment, we aren’t watching the fully educational shows. As humans, we have the ability to learn from what we see, but if we never watch shows that involve history we will never have the chance to absorb knowledge of hat particular subject. Part of the reasoning to that is that historians haven’t found an effective way to hold the interest of adolescents the way shows like Pretty Little Liars or Gossip Girl can. Without being able to incorporate education into television, this source of entertainment can hurt the child’s chance of learning. Not only that but news channels, that could actually help people learn, don’t always get the story 100% accurate, which in turn causes people to learn false information and believe it’s true. In the article He Doesn’t Like to Watch by Julia Scott, she shows how disinformation can come from our most believable sources, news. She uses the example of the so called connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, which was a topic that had much disinformation about it spread through the news.

Although television now plays a major role in our lives, it’s a major question being asked on whether or not it’s beneficial or detrimental to people and society. After analyzing these articles it has lead me to believe that television often flirts with a fine line that divides it’s benefits and it’s disadvantages.