Television Deprives Viewers of the Tools for Happiness

Every person has wants and needs. Abraham Maslow is known for theorizing that there are certain lower needs that need to be satisfied before higher needs can be achieved. He believes that in order to be completely happy, other needs must be met first. Some of these needs are self-esteem, love and safety. These are the basic needs that everyone needs that television defies. Yes, that's right television defies needs and I will explain how.

Most people are familiar with the pyramid of needs that Maslow presents. According to his theory we have to work our way up each block of the pyramid to reach self-actualization or true happiness. He says people need self esteem, love, and safety to be happy. Why are these needs so important? Without them a person would feel incomplete. We all need to feel important, needed, and safe! Imagine what it would be like to not feel safe, confident, or loved? Pretty miserable...it would lead to depression, anxiety, phobias of everything and lots more. Maslow's theory holds a lot of truth in that all of these emotions/feelings are needed to feel happy. I know that if I lived in fear, felt lonely, and felt unimportant all the time I would not feel happy at all. So how does television fit into all of this? TV slowly takes these basic needs away from viewers and the worst part is people don't even realize it is happening.

Maslow believed that as long as one is motivated to satisfy needs one is moving towards complete happiness (Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs). This theory has been followed and believed for a long time, but along came television. TV started to destroy people's basic needs of esteem, love, and safety. Television has been damaging people since it began regular broadcasting in the late 1940s. Even then viewers, parents, teachers, and social scientists worried that television portrayed people wrong which would lead to poor esteem. There was a lot of violence which would make people feel unsafe and I am sure they did not approve of how TV relationships were represented (Children and Television). People have worried about these issues from the beginning and people today are still concerned. By now I would think something would have been done to improve TV, but maybe people don't want their fantasy world destroyed.

Television takes away the need of self esteem which is important for everyone to have. People look up to actors or actresses who are on TV and they want to be like them. When people realize that they can never be as popular, pretty, muscular, or have any of the other traits they want one gets disappointed and wonders why they can't be like the person on TV that they so look up to. When I was struggling with my esteem TV did not help, in fact it made it worse. I would look at all the actress' that seemed flawless. They all had flawless skin, perfect teeth, name brand clothes, they were skinny, big breasted and of course a cute guy around their arms. No matter how much I tried I could never get the flawless skin or afford to get the clothes or braces. The young cute guys were nowhere to be found either. It hurt and I wondered why was it that actresses could achieve all that with no effort and I tried so hard and still saw no rewards. Finally it hit me that TV is not reality; in fact it is far from it.

Many Americans forget that television is not reality and people begin to think that what they see is reality. Fred Reed, who has been published in The Wall Street Journal along with other magazines and newspapers, agrees that TV exposes a false reality. He agrees, "Maybe the reason they have low self-esteem is that people think television is real...but the fantasy box tells you that the world is chiefly populated by glamorous hanks and gorgeous babes. They live like James Bond and don't have problems. Maybe guys watch this stuff and start thinking 'Gees, I don't have a Maserati, I've never been in a gun fight with international drug lord, and I'm the only man in America who hasn't married Elizabeth Taylor. Oh how I've failed' (The Case Against Self-Concept: Why Mama Doan' 'Low No Self-Esteem Roun' Heah). He is right. People get so involved with the fictional characters on television that they forget TV is not real! Viewers need to realize that Katie Holmes of Dawson's Creek or Brain Krause of Charmed are getting paid to act. They naturally do not look that attractive' it is just the work of cosmetics, stylists, and editors. They do not even act the way viewers see them on TV in real life; they are simply reading a script and acting as they are told to do.

People can't think that they can be like the people on TV unless they become an actor or actress themselves. Reed continues to say, "This is it: If you want to respect yourself, do something you will respect yourself doing" (The Case Against Self-Concept: Why Mama Doan' 'Low No Self-Esteem Roun' Heah). If one wants to be happy with themselves then they should do something that will make them happy. They should not try to be something they are not. People need to stop getting their esteem from television. The images on TV are fake and they don't send out good messages. Laurel Preece, a media and communication specialists consents, "TV characters and celebrities influence clothing choices, the way we talk, our hobbies and interests, the way we do decorate our homes, and even the way we behave" (Of Interest). Viewers are influenced on things by television and if they can't accomplish or get what they want like the people on TV they will simply doubt themselves. In a survey I composed among students at Bowling Green State University, 17 out of 23, 73 percent, agreed that TV affects self esteem negatively. One student complies, "A person may be affected by the media and attempt to live up a fictional life. When disappointed by this impossible crusade, the person feels themselves a let down to their peers." For people who want to be like people on television they are only going to be disappointed and hurt.

Not everyone agrees that television hinders people's self esteem. A student from the survey disputes, "I really don't think that TV can affect the self esteem of a mentally healthy person. If one cannot distinguish between fact and fiction and applies stereotypes to themselves then TV can be detrimental to your self esteem. If you are healthy mentally, then TV should not affect you." Esther Dyson, chairman of Electronic Frontier Foundation and president of EDventure Holdings illustrates, "I don't get self-esteem from having power over a screen. I get self esteem from having a broad reach, from being able to talk with other interesting people all over the world. I 'm smart enough and I presume most other people are smart enough, to human being. Real self-esteem is based on some kind of genuine accomplishment, and people are smart enough to know what that is (Interesting with People Before Technology). This is an excellent point, but for people who are searching to feel good about themselves they often turn to TV for answers or to avoid reality. Just like children they will mimic what they see and get hurt when it does not turn out how they hoped. P. Feitage of The High School Journal explains, "In the media, we are bombarded with mass images that demand acceptance and permit no opportunity for active response. As we sit in front of our television sets we become passive agents, manipulated to accept an existence that is characterized by a restriction of freedom, and a set of authoritarian values define a certain way of life as the 'best' and a certain version of reality as the 'truth' (Shanahn 273). People look to the media for what is acceptable and when they find that they don't fit that ideal they feel out of place and that will lower their self esteem. Isn't TV supposed to make people feel good, not bad?

The next need television keeps from us is love. Don't laugh it's true if you pay attention to what you are watching. TV love depicts real life love in an unrealistic way. In TV, love means nothing but physical pleasure or once a problem arises the relationship is through. In real life committed relationships don't work like that. If I left every time my partner and I had a problem our relationship wouldn't have lasted very long at all. Relationships take a lot of work, time, compromising, commitment, and more work. Many television shows don't portray relationships in that way. In the earlier days, up until the mid 1980s there were plenty of long lasting relationships television shows like, I love Lucy, The Brady Bunch, and even The Flintstones. Now no one stays in relationships, just watch shows like Gray's Anatomy, Drew Carey, and ER and one will see all the nonexistent fake relationships (Jackson 1). Today, many people are in search of their true soul mate. People don't want to marry until they find perfection; they are dreaming. No relationship is perfect and every healthy relationship has some type of problem. David Popenoe, a researcher at Rutgers University agrees, "It really provides a very unrealistic view of what marriage really is...the standard becomes so high it's easy to bail out if you didn't find a soul mate." It appears that the message of love for many TV shows is to bail out or don't even take the plunge into one (Jackson 1). Television likes to decorate relationship, but in reality they are messy. Roderick Estregan, a freelance entertainer and showbiz writer explains, "Love stories on film...really do influence-and-oftentimes dictate-our own views about love...They want butterflies in their stomachs, goose bumps, that walking on the clouds feeling, and all that corny stuff. Whatever happened to honesty, loyalty, companionship, and real friendship, huh" (Couch Kamote)? He is right.

Whatever happened to the TV couples who did talk and have a companionship, like Lucy and Rickie Ricardo of I love Lucy? Besides trying to find the "perfect" relationship, I think sex has a lot to do with it. Sex has changed TV relationships drastically and therefore changed people's view on real life relationships. In the 1950s a simple word like "pregnant" was banned from television. People thought that Elvis' thrusting hip movements were too offensive to be seen so the camera crew never risked filming below his waist (Sex on TV). Times changed by the 1960s, baby boomers were rejecting the firm sexual attitudes of the people before them. From here on sex became more and more accepted. Now, sex is on demand. It is now acceptable for people under 18 to have sex (sex on TV). Today 68 percent of television shows have sexual material or reference according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (TV gets 'R' Rating). TV is showing people that emotions do not matter; just with your partner and he or she is yours forever; otherwise one can just leave. People feel that sex is a huge part of a relationship now because on TV everyone does it. Just flip on any soap opera like General Hospital, Guiding Light, or Days of Our Lives and one will see people having sex with different people and it means nothing to them. A false portrayal of love, it would not be that easy to just leave without feeling anything. Without love, our needs are not fulfilled and one will never be fully happy. Stop mimicking everything you see on television and think for yourself.

On the other hand one student from the survey responded, "...Some show how people fight to keep their relationship strong." 7^th Heaven is the perfect example of this. This show actually shows what a real marriage entails and how much work is put into making it a successful one. However, 16 out of 23 students, 69 percent agree that television shows portray unrealistic love relationships. Some answers included, "That it is quick and everyone falls in love and has the perfect relationship. They jump to sex too fast and then their relationship is ruined" or "...unrealistic way, very seldom happens the way it does of TV in real life", and my personal favorite, "They portray it like a Dixie cup, cheap and replaceable." TV is showing unrealistic views of relationships and viewers need to stop believing everything they see.

The last need that television violates is our need to feel safe. There is so much violence on television that people begin to feel less safe in their surroundings. Again, TV is conveying false messages. TV desensitizes people on so many different levels and it keeps getting worse. People become so used to seeing people murdered and that scares them. People fall in the conception that television is reality and when they see people getting attacked or their home being robbed they fear for their safety. N. Signorielli, a writer on children and television affirms, "Research...has revealed that violence on television plays an important role in communication the social order and in tending to perceptions of the world as a mean and dangerous place" (Television Violence and Behavior: A Research Summary. ERIC Digest). Signorielli and M. Morgan, a television researcher concur, "The basic hypothesis is that heavy viewers [of television] will be more likely to perceive the world in ways that reflect the most stable and recurrent patterns of portrayals in the television world") Shanahan 274). James Shanahan, a researcher of adolescence and TV concludes, "Thus, if television is more violent than the real world, heavy viewers should see the world as more violent" (Shanahan 274). People watch so much TV that they start to believe the world is violent, unsafe, and out to get them, just like on television. One student from my survey states, "Many times, because of its ability to bring all news from everywhere, it makes people feel a lot less safe. It shows a lot of violence and suffering and pain." 10 our 23 students, 43 percent, agree that TV makes them feel less safe. If people feel unsafe they are going to fear everything around them. They are also going to be less trusting which could affect relationships with other people. Television is depriving us of our need to feel safe.

However, 13 out of 23 students, 53 percent, feel television has no affect on safety at all. One student affirms, "...I think it makes them feel more safe. It gives them a habit/routine to refer to." TV helps people feel secure, but how can one feel secure if they are afraid of being murdered or raped? People get these ideas from television and it needs to stop. I do not want to believe there is a bad person luring around every corner. I prefer feeling comfortable and safe in my surroundings.

Television has robbed us of our essential needs to be happy for long enough because we allow it. There was a time when people fought against the fakeness that cause people to lose self esteem, love, and safety from watching TV. In today's culture we have become so desensitized to everything that nothing fazes us and we just accept it all. Television may not be the real evil but us as a society who makes it so. Rather we realize it or not television influences us on a lot of our day to day life especially those who are easily influenced such as children and teenagers. Most of the time we can brush aside that little voice saying, "I wished I looked like that" or "That looks so good lets go buy it" but not always. It is time viewers take the stand and show the entertainment business that we are tired of being lied to. It is time our needs get met. Stop believing everything you see on TV or help people change the ideals of certain television shows, or you could simple just do nothing. The choice is yours, but I say I am sick of being robbed of my needs; I deserve to be happy and so do you.

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