Television Doesn't Change Us, We Change Television

Back on October 20th, 2006 renee wrote an article called Can Watching TV Change Your Personality? In the article renee talks about the effects of watching TV and asks if the commercials and TV you watch are changing you. My answer to this would be no. I don't believe that TV is changing us. Let me tell you why.

First let's take television shows. A lot of people might try and blame a lot of what's going on in the world today on television. They might say television today has a lot more mature content and younger people are seeing this and deciding that's how they want to act. I don't buy it. Television always has been and always will be about making money. In order to make money television need high ratings and in order to get high ratings the television show has to be something that people want to see. Television caters to what is going on in the world, not vice versa.

To suggest that television got more violent and graphic and then society followed would be like saying that one day a bunch of television executives got together and decided to make a show that nobody wanted to see. Then one day all of America just happened to fall on that station they saw how violent the show was and the world was changed. No, that would never happen. Television executives would never put a really violent show on television unless that's what people wanted to see. The world changed first then television changed.

Second of all how many people have really acted out something they saw from a television show? Sure you hear stories on the news about so and so shooting someone because they saw it on the Sopranos, but how many people out there really do that? I'm twenty-six years old and I've come across a lot of people in my life. My neighbors, people I met in elementary school, middle school, high school and college, people I know at church, my friends, my friends' families, my friend's friends, people I've worked with; I've come in contact with a whole lot of people over the span of my life. And yet I've never known a single person who has acted out something they've seen on TV, a movie, a video game or whatever else.

That tells me that the percentage of people who are actually dumb enough to do that kind of things is actually very, very slim. The thing is the news just makes a big deal out a story like that. If there were 10,000 people in a town and one person killed someone because they saw it on TV you would hear a report about how that one person killed someone because of so and so show. But you never hear a report about how 9,999 people in that town lived a normal everyday life despite watching television their whole life.

I once wrote an article called Are Video Games Ruining Today's Children and my opinions about video games are the same as for television. Yes there are bad television shows out there but as a parent it's your responsibility to do two things. Number one is to make sure your children are watching the appropriate things. Number two is to explain to your child what is right and wrong. If you teach your child that violence is wrong then it doesn't matter if they watch 7th Heaven or Sopranos, they won't go shooting up anybody.

If you teach your child that premarital sex is wrong then they'll know that Friends is a bunch of garbage. You should also explain to your child that television is fake and that they should not do the same things they see on television. If your child tends to act things out even if you tell them not to then don't let them watch bad programs. If you're a single parent and can't monitor what your child watches then don't get a television.

Commercials are a little bit different than television shows because they don't cater to your likes. A commercial's job is to persuade you of something that you might not like. So this can lead to some problems. Beer commercials might say that you have to drink to be cool. Or commercials for hair and makeup commercials might tell girls they have to look a certain way. But again with good parenting you can avoid these things. If you teach your children that drinking is wrong then it won't matter how many commercials they see, they'll know it's wrong. Sure children might watch television when they are really young and not know the difference between reality and fiction. But children still learn a lot more from reality.

Children learn how talk from hearing other people. Children learn how to walk from watching other people. Children learn what to say from hearing other people. Children are constantly watching adults and mimicking them more than they are television. It's easy to blame television for our problems but the truth is the problems in the world today are our own fault. Television didn't change America, America changed television.