TV : An Atomizing Effect On Society

TV: an atomizing effect on society

At first sight, TV appears as one of the best technologies of today. There is the ability to be connected with the rest of the world, and you can also learn by watching the news, have fun by watching TV shows or videos, or play video-games. People feel they are reunited by this technology, but in reality we may wonder if they aren’t divided up by it.

First, it creates a certain TV-fashion. People who don’t have TV or don’t have access to TV easily may be put aside, especially with children. Indeed, children and young people talk a lot about the programs they see on TV. There is also a split up within the population who watches TV. They disagree on TV programs they see, or just disagree on the genres of TV programs they see, and they are torn apart in different groups.

TV has become such a centre of attraction that it takes time away from other activities that usually reunites people, such as games or sports. This can be easily deduced from the article « GPs declare state of emergency over childhood obesity », in The Times, published in august, where they denounce the increase in rates of obesity in England and the whole world. Less and less people then do sport. Yet, it helps learning how to communicate with someone. For example, in football, you perform differently according to how play your partners, and you are also closer to them as you are directly in contact and not through a screen.

Finally, every person changes by watching TV. For example, the TV show « Heroes » is a 12-rated TV show, but still it had such an enormous impact that The Peacock network has ordered 13 episodes of a new standalone arc titled « Heroes Reborn », according to tvline.com. Yet, some persons are known as more vulnerable to violence on television, such as emotionally disturbed children. Therefore, some who have often easily access to TV, could be easily touched by the TV show, and could evolve differently than the rest of people who watch the show. This idea of TV changing people can be also seen in www.newscientist.com. The journalists assets: “The roughly 40% increase in attention problems among « heavy » TV viewers was observed “. This idea of people evolving differently contributes to the dispersal of society.

A group of people watching TV can be divided by their preferences for different TV programs, or because they stop other activities which reunites them, or even because they are changed and they evolve differently depending on their character. We can therefore say that TV has an atomizing effect on society. And the society does not seem to take drastic measures to stop that effect, since violent video games and TV shows are still sold, and since the rates in obesity are still raising.

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