Some people regard television as a social problem – it can break up relationships, it can impact your kids in a variety of negative ways, it can prove to be addictive.
Others, however, can’t live without TV. For some, the first thing they do when they rise from bed in the morning is to put on the TV.
How about you?
Do you feel that there are more advantages to watching TV than disadvantages?
Let’s consider a number of pros and cons of watching TV…
What are the Advantages of Watching Television?
1 It’s cheap entertainment
You buy your TV – relatively cheap nowadays. You pay for your cable or whatever. You pay for your electrical usage. You’re done.
2 Know your stuff
You can keep fully updated with world affairs and a whole lot more by watching TV.
3 Educational value
There are many TV channels that provide a continual stream of educational stuff. Discovery and National Geographic Channel are a couple examples.
4 More educational value
You get lots of DIY TV shows these days. You get plenty of gardening shows. You are offered almost a continual stream of cooking shows. If you’re into financial investment, there’s that, too.
5 Feeling lonely?
There’s a term that’s been coined by psychologists: “social surrogacy.”
Social surrogacy refers to how television plays a large part, potentially so, in filling in social gaps in your life.
6 Love to travel? Lack the time or money to travel?
There are travel programs galore on TV these days.
While travel programs can educate and encourage you to travel, travel programs also fill a kind of void in that you no longer have to travel because you’ve already “experienced” it on TV.
7 Social bonding
Various televised events help people to bond. Families come together, perhaps on a certain day of the week, to watch a drama series, for example. Friends come together to watch the Super Bowl. Et cetera.
8 Health benefits
We all know that laughter is good for us mentally. Many television programs are made to help us to laugh.
What Are the Disadvantages of Watching Television?
1 Negative impact
Violence, sex, and crime are all regularly seen on TV these days.
And, just for example, a number of ongoing studies have demonstrated a correlation between aggressive behavior that starts out in childhood and continues on into adult age and watching violence on TV.
2 Too much isn’t too good
More studies have shown that watching too much TV (more than three hours daily) can be instrumental in leading to obesity.
When people watch over three hours of TV per day, it can lead to sleeping difficulties, to lower school grades, to behavioral problems and to a variety of other health issues.
3 Antisocial
It’s true that watching TV can make us antisocial. But then, in comparison to cellphone culture…
4 Too many repeats; nothing worth watching
TV can be a waste of time. Too many repeats, too much garbage.
5 Too much advertising
TV these days is packed full of ads. And who, in their right mind, wants to watch a mass of ads?
6 Shallow makes shallow
Many TV programs are extremely shallow with regards too content.
If you watch shallow TV programs, it can make you a shallow person. Not to mention reality TV. There’s little reality in reality TV.
7 TV can be detrimental to your relationship
And it’s easy to understand why that is.
Image by StockSnap from Pixabay