Watching Tv

Mario Shafik

Mrs. Parsons

English III

9 November 2015

Watching TV

        Is TV good for you? According to Marie Winn, TV is a serious bad habit. Winn was born in Czechoslovakia in 1936, grew up in New York City and graduated from Colombia University. Throughout her writing, she explains how dangerous TV addiction is. She uses parentheses, italics, and first person to explain how the addiction process begins. TV addiction can have dangerous and deadly effects. Although many people think TV addiction is a natural habit in that it doesn’t affect audience’s life, TV addiction is a dangerous habit because it affects audiences lives and health, ruins relationships, and wastes time.

        Many people would think that watching TV doesn’t affect health or life. TV addicts have an unbalanced life and bad health. But TV addiction can take audience to their imaginary place where they can imagine whatever they want.  TV “Allows the participant to log out of the real world and enter into a pleasurable and passive mental state” (Winn 508). Winn tries to show that not only young children are addicted to TV, she shows that all kinds of people can be addicted to television. Winn shows that even a University English professor is addicted to TV. Winn also supports her claim by comparing TV addiction to addicts and cookie lovers.  Television is a drug that audiences want to get “hooked” on.  Winn states in her short writing, Cookies or Heroin, describing the lives of heavy viewers as, “unbalanced by their TV as a drug addicts” (509). This can seriously effect people’s life and health.

         Many people believe that TV addiction isn’t serious because it helps people grow and become more “popular”. TV causes bad relationships and wastes time.  Heavy viewers think that TV is good for them because it provides information and makes audiences relax.  Television “provides a temporary respite from reality” and makes people mellow and calm (Winn 508). This proves that television has some positive sides, bought a lot more on the negative side.  Television can give people the satisfaction of feeling relaxed but can make people feel worried at the same time. On the other side, there are people that think TV addiction is a dangerous habit which makes people lose track of time and makes audiences have weak relationships. People who are addicted to television are “living in a holding pattern” and have bad relationships (Winn 509). People are also willing to pay for TV just to get them “hooked” on something.  Something to make them feel good, something to make them feel appreciated, something to make them feel honored. TV gives audience a lot of of adrenalin, which will make them feel good, but in return it will take time for payment.  Yet, people still think that TV addiction is nothing.  That is why TV addiction is more dangerous than “Heroin or Cookies.” (Winn 508) That’s why some people drop out of school or never finish college. And that is why people end up in situation they didn’t want to be in. Yet, people are willing to change their lives for something stupid and arid.