Prompt: What are your thoughts on the idea that television has turned out to isolate people instead of bringing them together?
Television isolates people rather than bringing them together. Television depresses people rather than cheering them up. Television has become more of an obsession rather than a fun pastime.
A study conducted by the University of Wollong found that depression and anxiety rates were directly linked to time spent in front of the idiot box. People get so caught up in their made up television world that they forget what reality feels like. Going back into the real world becomes a chore and they envelop themselves further and further into their fairytale. The wife of Guy Montag in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury meets a similar fate. It is said that their TV was three-walled and that she desperately yearned for a fourth wall. She is simply unconcerned with anything that do not involve the characters of her favorite series. The TV only gives you an illusion of safety and security and happy ending, and if people are unable to accept it, their worlds come crashing down. Consider the words of Andy Warhol, who said that he stopped caring about close relationships when he was introduced to the TV. What does that mean for the people of today?
Excessive TV viewing is detrimental to social interpersonal interactions. It tends to make people close in on themselves and aggravate further introversion in people with low self-esteem.TV only shows us the best - singers,actors, or dancers- and many people spend their lives not being able to live up to their own expectations of glory and grandeur- all because they were continually bombarded with images of people better than them. TV does not show us the gritty side of anything- actors and actresses have always looked that good, or professional dancers didn’t practise at all or that art simply flowed out of the artist without any editing or revision.
While it is shortsighted to say that TV has had only a negative impact on society, it is the truth of today.
In all its unedited glory - my essay.