In the article “TV’s Distorted Images” written by Tom Seibert talks about the powerful ways TV can affect the way people think. TV can ruin a person’s outlook on themselves, thinking, and acting. In “TV’s Distorted Images”, Seibert writes the changes in people’s lives and their self-awareness of how they live. Tom wrote his article in 1995 when TV was brought to Fiji with just one channel working. The young girls that he had talked to were all perfectly happy and healthy and lived life with the biggest smile until two high-rated TV shows became a part of their life. Once the girls started watching shows like Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 90210, they became self-conscious. The girls no longer enjoyed how they looked, believing they were overweight or not pretty. …show more content…
Seibert says, “Perhaps most tellingly, girls who watched television three or more nights per week were far more likely to describe themselves as ‘too fat’ than those who didn’t” (546).
Also, if someone reads further into the facts they will find that, “Fifteen percent of those girls said they had induced vomiting to control weight, while thirteen percent tested high risk for eating disorders” (546). However, the true question is if one channel can make such a new behavior change in a place where everyone was so happy, what is it doing to the people with hundreds of channels? Not only does TV change how we act, but what we like as well. Companies pay an insane amount of money to be shown on commercials for TV shows and movies, so people will try their products and then eventually buy them for a long time. It is a way to manipulate the viewer and get their business on
top. In my opinion, TV is a bad escape for people’s problems. TV can affect people’s bodies and minds in multiple ways. Not only can we have higher chances of obesity or heart disease by sitting on the couch and eating unhealthy food or not exercising, but we also have less of a chance of being the person we’ve always wanted to be. We take TV and make it our “run away” when we don’t want to do homework or clean the house. It is a bad “go to” when we should be going for walks, the gym, or a yoga class from a DVD in the living room. Instead, we watch other people better themselves on the Biggest Loser and think to ourselves, “Oh my, that looks awful. I can’t believe I’m watching this.” Meanwhile, the people on the show became so unhealthy by making unhealthy choices like the viewer is at the time watching. It is irony at its finest. Americans are the biggest offenders, and we need to stop to fix ourselves. We are wasting our life and not seeing what is outside to explore. We need to put our health, life, and family first and then the dullness of TV last because it’s taking time away from us. Time is precious because we never know when it is going to be the last day. We should live every day to the fullest with the biggest smile on the outside. There is more to life that we all need to explore.
Shapiro,M., & Lang, A. (1991).Making television reality: Unconscious processes in the construction of social reality. Communication Research, 18, 685–705. doi: 10.1177=009365091018005007
In an article ' The Plug-In Drug ' the author Marie Winn discusses the bad influence of television on today's society. Television is a ' drug ' that interfere with family ritual, destroys human relationships and undermines the family.
With nearly global use of the television; it has become a preferred method with which to influence and regulate people’s thinking, creating an unreal and idealistic, hypothetical reality which people strive to emulate. This is accomplished through shows and movies; the majority of which emphasize a perfect world, entirely free of corruption and poverty; where everyone is physically attractive, emotionally stable, and economically wealthy; a distorted reflection of our own world. This leads real people to attempt to create this imaginary world, only to fail; thus generating in themselves a sense of unworthiness, which in turn prompts them to try harder, to stop being individuals and become uniform.
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...
The fast food industry is one of the largest sectors of the United States economy. Companies such as Burger King, Wendy's, Taco Bell, McDonalds and KFC have all become household names. Each of these companies operates under a similar mission statement: to serve a quick, filling meal for a very low cost. The primary marketing medium for these companies is television where via commercials, they can portray both their products and a lifestyle. Their intense advertising focus on minorities and children, however, has begun to exacerbate the epidemic of obesity that is sweeping our nation. Fast food's televised advertising is a significant contributor to obesity in today's minority youth. By promoting unhealthy tendencies and high-calorie foods as well as an attitude that promotes tolerance of diseases such as obesity, these companies are influencing people to such a degree that it is negatively affecting their health. This dangerous marketing method is not only sweeping America, but other countries as well. The emphasis on fast food companies' immoral marketing raises the question: Are people eating for hunger or because of an advertised, influenced habit? However, we must also address whether or not fast food companies are mainly responsible, or if the blame also covers their consumers.
In this generation, filled with technology, we are surrounded by the media and are constantly seeing commercials for weight loss and billboards covered with extremely fit people that have the bodies we wish we could obtain. We see images in the media all the time and do not even realize the affect that they are having on us. When watching television,about 30% of what you are watching is advertisements that are slowly stimulating your mind. “The media and body image are closely related due to the number of images we see in the media and the excessive amount of exposure we have to those images” (The media and body image, 2015). When people view advertisements they do not think of the effect that it is having on them, it may be small but it can grow as more and more are viewed. Advertisements lead us to believe that we need to be like that, so when a magazine has photo shoot of a woman with a perfect body getting a tan on the beach we strive to be like that. We do know that that body is not achievable but want it so badly we will do whatever the magazine tells us. Photoshopping is also a dangerous thing when it come to body
...causes. In conclusion, I do not believe the media is to blame. I believe that there are many factors to eating disorders. While I do not have an opinion as to the exact cause of eating disorders, I can say I do not believe that it is caused by the media, just worsened.
Media has more of an effect than people realize on how people think about themselves, especially body shape. Social media, television, and magazines all encourage low self-esteem regarding body image and eating disorders. The media is a major factor in young boys and girls developing eating disorders; when surrounded by media for hours a day filled with commercials encouraging weight loss and models that are unhealthily skinny, it is inevitable to feel insecure about your body shape and self image and in some cases, results in developing an eating disorder. The frequent use of media also contributes to the fact that people become influenced by what they see in the media. 8 out of 10 Americans watch television on a daily basis.
Media has an influence on society like no other. In the world today media basically controls everything and informs people of all that is going on. Media does, however, create stereotypes in society in many different ways which makes people believe and think about cultures or a certain groups of people and how they act differently. Jennifer Pozner the author of “Ghetto Bitches, China Dolls and Cha Cha Divas” talks about the harmful ways of stereotyping in reality television. In Pozner’s essay she focuses on how badly the society is taking its course. The course in the show being that changing a person to look a certain way against their will is good but in reality to viewers it seems like a horrible thing to do. Media has been most of the the
In the recent year of TV, television shows have changed substantially. When we look back and think about “I Love Lucy” and “The Honeymooners”, you can really see a difference in how TV has transformed. Today we have thousands of channels ranging from sports, news, cooking, cartoons, soap operas and the many more that are out there. Reality TV is also a type of trend on the TV that has put such an impact on how society. In fact the perfect example for a reality show that has influenced society majorly would be “Keeping Up with the Kardashians”.
Essay 1: Television “How plastic and artificial life has become. It gets harder and harder to find something…real. Real love, real friends, real body parts” (Scott). In the highly popularized TV series Keeping Up with the Kardashians, the show depicts our increasingly materialistic society. The series showcases the Kardashian family’s lavish lifestyle, jam-packed with spa dates, luncheons with friends, exotic cars, luxurious homes, entrepreneurial events, glamorous vacations and the daily family drama over irrelevant issues.
This is also related to the idea of resonance, which also explains why women and young girls internalize media images. These idea says that viewers’ life experiences affect their perceptions of television. So, if an individual’s life experiences are similar to the media content that they are viewing, the m...
I agree with Marie Winn 100%, and I think she does have a valid point. Television is a major addition in society and people are so blind-sighted by it that they don’t even realize that they’re being hypnotized into a trance. Television is brainwashing the minds of everyone, and there is no stop to it. It’s mainly up to the person who is watching the television to decide to turn it off, without having any regrets about it.
Television is making England fat. Harvard University researchers discovered that the odds of a child becoming obese have risen from 12 to 20% for each daily hour of television he/she watches. On the other hand reality TV is only a small cause of this on the other hand the snacks people consume while watching reality TV are overwhelmingly high in fat, cholesterol, salt, and sugar, and low in vitamins and minerals. The U.S. Surgeon General has revealed "that 70% of food advertisements are for foods high in fat, cholesterol, sugar, and salt, while only 3% are for fruits and vegetables.
These articles discuss the future of cultivation research (research on the roles of the message conveyed by television to viewers' perceptions and attitudes) in the context of "changing media environment." Based on the cultivation research since the 1960s, although there are many criticisms, it is argued that current cultivation theory has reached the certain quality of paradigmatic performance. According to Morgan and Sanahan, researchers have generally accepted the fundamental premises of the theory that television, in exposing the messages, possesses incremental effect, although generally it achieves or “cultivates” on the level of mental entity of the viewers. However, because it is accumulated, it may open possibilities to influence viewers’ overt behaviors in the long term. In principle, as Sanahan’s argument, media serves to create meaningful perception of people’s mental environment (symbolic environment) and cause a collective consciousness in seeing the reality of the worlds (perceived reality), in ”variety of contexts and situations" (Morgan & Sanahan, p.349). For these reasons, these two researchers highlight that the main issue is that researchers should answer questions about how to stabilizing the audience beliefs and conceptions (and also the media related power structures) rather than research on attitude or behavior changes.