A hobby is an activity one does regularly for enjoyment yet one of the fastest rising activities is usually forgotten as a hobby. According to Rodriguez (2017) seventy-three percent of Americans and ninety percent of millennials said that they binge-watched. Binge-watching is defined as watching multiple videos or episodes in one sitting. A large percentage of people shockingly average five hours per sitting. This hobby is frequently unclaimed as one’s favorite hobby because of the negative stigmas surrounding it. The terms “lazy” or “couch potato” is often used towards individuals who decide to indulge in watching videos during their free time. Unbeknownst to many, binge-watching can be a beneficial hobby since it can strengthen relationships, …show more content…
Throughout the years television shows have developed drastically with clearer pictures and better acting. The improvements have made the stories more complex and easier to relate to. Cohen (2017) argued that the complexity means that the viewer must be able to follow the storyline and juggle multiple characters and their lives. Understanding the complex stories makes an individual more “cognitively sophisticated.” The majority of shows require the audience to fill in gaps in the story by utilizing their deductive reasoning throughout the episodes. To make things even more difficult when a season ends or takes a mid-season break, viewers must depend on their memory. Although the show is usually back on within months, in cases like “Full House” and “Fuller House” viewers must retain the events that occurred in the show for several years. These examples are ways that binge-watching increases ones’ academic intelligence, but this hobby also affects emotional intelligence. …show more content…
Everyone knows that being a parent to a teenager can be difficult. Sherrow claims to have found a solution to make connecting to your kids a little easier. She says that by parents binge-watching the same shows with their children can create a sense of “togetherness” and that it “enhances communication across the generations.” Creating that connection through binge-watching isn’t limited to families but also helps with romantic relationships. Many couples have an unspoken rule that the other partner is not allowed to watch an episode of a shared show without the other. This interdependence creates an extra sense of wanting to be with the other partner. Even Netflix themselves wanted to know more on how binge-watching affects love lives. In the article written by Liberatore she shows the results of Netflix’s study which shows that almost sixty percent of people feel that binge-watching is a great way to connect with their spouse. Another twenty-seven percent of people have even said that show compatibility is important to have a successful
In the world today watching television is so addictive that everything else looks unattractive. The author argues that television is not lethal as drugs and alcohol but it can have many effects such as children getting more violent and reality seem second best. Every person lives are filled with emotions including anxiety, depression, and stress so after long hard work day the best medicine is to turn the television on and not to worry about anything. For example, I usually drive from site to site to take care of business. So when I return home from work I will sit on my couch and turn the television on and flick the channel until I fall to sleep. As Marie Winn describes, "the television experience allows the participant to blot out the real world and e...
If we were to take a look around, there is not a doubt that we will at least see one person with a phone in his or her hand. Smart phones, tablets, computers and televisions are a staple in most common households today. As technology becomes smarter, it is noticeable that people are becoming increasingly lazier. According to a survey conducted by the Department of Labor in 2012, watching TV was the leisure activity that occupied the most time, about 2.8 hours a day (“American Time Use Survey Summary”). This means people are spending more time in front of their televisions than they are any other activities in their free time. Technology is the number one thing people turn to, whether it is for entertainment or for functional use. People are relying on technology devices more than they should be.
In the article, “Gin, Television, and Social Surplus”, American writer, Clay Shirky, asserts that ‘unproductive activities’, such as watching television, will cease to diminish. While the TV producer interviewing Shirky contemplated that these activities were just a fad (par. 19), Shirky argues that they aren’t temporary and they will continue to enlarge within society. One of the reasons is because people do not desire to extend their time being productive. Shirky speculated that people’s thoughts about productivity are, “It's fun to go out and produce and share a little bit, but then people are going to eventually realize, ‘This isn't as good as doing what I was doing before,’ and settle down” (par. 19). This is significant because it displays
Watching “Modern Family”, a thirty minute sitcom on Wednesday nights, enhances your intellect and makes you smarter. The show is about one extended family that lives in California. Within that family network are individual stories which follow a main plot. Each week the story lines mingle throughout each other, the characters deal with problems, and they face and solve them with humor. “Modern Family” is an example of Steven Johnson’s essay, “Watching TV Makes You Smarter”.
With the additional “collection of distinct strands” to the episodes, the public became willing “to tolerate more complicated narratives”. This allowed the audiences to comprehend more storylines and characters as well as linking different episodes, improving their cognitive skills. In television shows like The Sopranos multiple threading is a common tactic used to provide information to the audience in an interesting way. Johnson explains, “The narrative weaves together a collection of distinct strands-sometimes as many as ten, though at least half of the threads involve only a few quick scenes scattered through the episode”. He believes that due to the rising technology in pop culture the audience is conditioned to comprehend the increasingly difficult plots developed with multiple threading. Essentially, then, Johnson’s theory of “multiple threading” is based on the increase of narrative complexity through
This shows viewers that TV has become smarter because viewers now need to pay more attention and analyze an episode more thoroughly to be able to understand the entire season or
Steven Johnson in “watching television makes you smarter” believes that the complexity of the shows' plots has a cognitive value, nutrition for the viewers. Dana Stevens arguments this fact by also stating that television only “teaches you to watch more television”, the complexity of the new shows help you understand how the show will turn out. However, they do not help you for real life events that the shows try to depict. In my opinion, television is just a fun thing to do occasionally to relax and get your mind off of the regular life. It can teach you some things however you should take them in consideration.
In the argumentative essay “T.V. Addiction” by Marie Winn, Winn relates watching television to having an addiction with drugs and alcohol. The television experience allows us to escape from the real world and enter into a pleasurable and peaceful mental state. When it comes to television, Marie asks the following question: Is there a kind of television viewing that falls into the more serious category of destruction addiction? I believe there is. Why do so many people, instead of doing what they’re supposed to be doing, put everything on hold and just focus on television? I think this is because they want an escape from their problems.
Television has come a long way since it was first introduced. Originally, it was thought that the masses that watch television enjoyed the more simple shows that would tell you exactly what was going on from start to finish. In Steven Johnson’s article, “Watching TV Makes You Smarter”, Johnson argues that this is actually not the case. In fact, Johnson argues that much more people enjoy shows that involve multi threading, or multiple plots that are all connected.
Binge watching: “viewing multiple episodes of a television program in rapid succession”, is a phenomenon that television enthusiasts have embraced with the introduction of new technologies like SVOD, streaming video on demand, television consumption platforms unique to the digital age (“binge-watch,” def. 1). Services that offer SVOD such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime are even encouraging binge watching through their marketing practices and content creation (Greenberg). So why is binge watching, or rather binge viewing, an activity that people are participating in under the false assumption that it is a socially unacceptable guilty pleasure; an indulgence, just as eating an exorbitant amount of high-calorie foods is.
Our culture puts entirely too much emphasis on popular entertainment. Of course, we all need to be distracted occasionally, but if we spend a lot of time browsing our favorite websites, watching television, playing video games, or updating our social networking accounts, we are merely avoiding life’s more important realities. Moreover, none of these activities helps us develop any of the skills or acquire any of the knowledge we need to succeed in the real world. Can popular entertainment offer us anything of value, or is it just a worthless distraction? I am here to say it can offer us some value. Three reasons I believe entertainment can offer us value is it can be used for family problems, or just family nourishment. My second reason is it can tell you about daily life and what is going wrong from news, or sportscenter. But, many families who don’t have television, or social network accounts can also get information. Which leads me to say that cellphone applications are helpful. So, entertainment can be of great value but it can also be used to our own advantage.
When it comes to the topic of television, most of us would readily agree that watching television is a waste of time. Where the agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of “are there shows that increase our intelligence?” and what pleasure do some television show bring to us? I would say there are some great shows that increase our intelligence. Shows like “Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?” this kind of show puts the brain to work; thinking. There are some other shows that tend to convince us that watching television seduces our mind. I find Johnson’s argument about his article “watching television makes you smarter” confusing because he was not actually picking sides in the article and Steven’s “Thinking Outside The Idiot Box” argument about how “it’s really good at teaching you to think… about the future episode” (Steven, 296). Although I agree with the author of “Watching Television Makes you Smarter” Johnson to an extent, I cannot accept that he overlooks how much time people spends each day watching television.
In “Television Addiction” by Marie Winn, the author suggests that TV addiction and Drug and Alcohol addiction are similar in many ways. First she explains what she considers to be a serious drug addiction, such as not feeling normal without them, the need to repeat it, ignoring other pleasurable experiences, never being satisfied, damaging one’s life and ruining relationships. Then she asks us to consider the television addiction in the same light and explains why she feels that it should be. In my experience I can see how television viewing would be considered an addiction and why Winn would too. When someone allows an activity to negatively affect their productivity, relationships and
Whether it’s a friend that switched schools and is never around, or a family member in another country, the internet makes it possible to email, instant message, and even video chat. Such qualities of internet communication bring people together with more frequent contact, boosting sociability and relationships. The article “Fast Entertainment and Multitasking in an Always-on World” said, “‘I multitask the most with the computer and television,’ Justin explained. When there are commercials he usually goes online, ‘In that gap of time, I am normally on instant messenger talking to friends’” (Watkins 147). This is showing that people are squeezing in all their time to be connected with other people so they don’t fall behind society. Constantly connecting with people online has become a way to communicate to anyone throughout th...
To many children, TV can be appealing because they find the colorful cartoons interesting and instantly catches their attention. But, as entertaining and fun Television can be, spending too much time looking at your big fifty inch flat screen TV can eventually impact your life. It seems like if you just spend all your time sitting on the couch, you may find yourself preparing fast meals, such as a ham sandwich thrown with some potato chips on a plate or just driving to buying something from McDonald’s. But this can eventually affect your health. If we give Television too much attention it can also affect relationships with parents, siblings or a partner. It can slowly become an easy addiction to come home to, sit on the couch and spend the rest of the day watching all the shows we like. Lastly, too much Television can affect our mood which can lead to certain thinking and