The importance of the television nowadays

Proiect: The importance of the television nowadays

The importance of the television nowadays

Communication is getting more and more important with each day, even if it is verbal or nonverbal. If we would to give a definition of communication, we can say that it is the process of receiving and sending a message from a person to another. Communication it is the most important process of our life. It can be between people but exists also in the form of mass communication.

Mass communication is a social process through which a specialized group collects and sends messages to a large public using different ways, like newspapers, television, radio, internet, advertising and other. All of them have an important role in society, they offer people a picture of reality and in the same time take part in economical, informative, educational decisions.

Marian Petcu said about television in his work ( Sociologia, Mass Media, 2002, p69):

television is very useful for killing spare time and less useful for needs of evasion.

movies and television help to keep a friendly relationship.

Today it is very common for a family to have at least one television. In fact, it is so common that it is difficult to imagine a house without a TV. The variety of programmes and valuable content it offers can interest the whole family.

First of all, there are many different types of programmes on television that are useful. The viewer can watch a weather report to prepare for the day. Cartoons and sport provide relaxation and fun. School programmes, documentaries and the news teach us about the world. And advertisements inform us about products and new ideas.

Secondly, the content is relevant because it is realistic and up to date. As TV is a medium that combines moving, colour images and sound, it resembles real life, so the viewers can identify with what they see. For example, news reports can be broadcast live and from all over the world. This means that information is available almost anywhere at any time.

Television offers us valuable programmes and serves many purposes in our daily lives. Television not only provides many types of programmes with interesting content, but also entertains us.

  Effects of Television on Child and Family

Many families have arguments involving the time that their children spend in front of the TV, or involving the content that they watch. Small children see their parents standing hours in front of the TV and they do the same. Children often have problems with school or health because of too much television. They fail in school classes or they gain weight. Parents who work and cant control the time spent by their children in front of the TV lose control of them. They watch action movies or real life dramas and they think that they are in control. Children often take a character from a movie and bring it to life reacting in a negative way.

Parents need to control the television received in their houses. They need to know at any time what their children are watching and try to control the time spent in front of the TV. Children need outdoor activities, school field trips, home activities and time spent with their parents.

Looking at the television effects in a positive way, thinking that it can be controlled by parents, children can learn great things from TV. They can learn the alphabet, learn to read, to spell, to sing, to socialize or discovering new hobbies. Documentaries help children in discovering new things and wanting to know more about everything that they see: nature, human body, wild life and much more.

Another thing that children learn through television is communication. Children learn how to react when meeting people and how to interact with them. They observe what happens during verbal and nonverbal communication, reactions of people in different stages of communication, ways of communication. Television can help children understand the basic rules of a good communication, or to discover what happens during a wrong process of communication.

Television can also teach parents a great deal about their children or the life that surrounds them. A parent could learn about a good healthy way to raise a child, or new things about the educational systems. TV shows to a parent how to get a better message to their children through a better communication process.

The Meaning of Television in the American Family

The American family watches TV more that any family in the world. They usually watch morning shows on breakfast, during the day they watch reality shows and sports before going to bed. In the poor families parents have to keep two jobs in order to raise their children, and in this time they leave their kids at home watching TV.

Family disputes appear when the content on TV is not liked by all the members of the family. In order too keep all members of the family happy parents buy extra television sets and install them in the children bedrooms. Now children can watch more TV than usual and they skip lessons or stay in the house more, they skip lunch or dinner and lose contact with their parents. Staying in the house for a long time, they dont do sports, they eat at late hours and then they gain weight. Television can change the course of a childs life.

The process of children watching television along with members of the family is called coviewing. If this process is done in a good way, meaning that the parent can choose the programmes and then explain the content to the children. If parents have a good idea about the effects of television on children then they can control the negative ways of TV on children. Television has a very poor content for children because TV is used mostly by adults and the parent needs to filter this content for hes child.

When talking about families and television we need to mention that arguments can appear also between parents. The wife wants to watch a cooking show and the husband wants to watch sports. They argue more often and in the end they lose contact. The family cant communicate properly. They are separated by television when they feel the need to buy another TV. The husband stays up late to watch action movies or sport and the wife cant cook dinner because shes watching her favourite soap opera.

If parents are affected by television in a negative way so are the children. Parents need to communicate with their children.

In other order of ideas, a TV in the life of the American family can help the family or it can damage it. In order to have benefits from television, members of the family need to control the time spent in front of the TV and the quality of the content shown on TV.

Power of Television

Nowadays, television is the most influential media. We get our news from TV and we find entertainment on TV. Now, television is a way of life for the most of us. In a way we are loosing our identity, we are loosing the meaning of our life. Every day we see breaking news, cinema premiers, political stunts, real life drama, and we start to think that this is real life. We dont read books anymore, we dont travel like we used to do, and we dont meet new people. Its like TV its trying to keep us in our homes, connected, happy or sad. Why is this happening? Communication; we dont communicate with other people. The power of television is making us think that we dont need interaction with other people. Its giving us an easier choice, the choice of silence.

Communication as a process is very easy: you send a message thru various means, verbal, written, shown, and then you wait for a response. But keeping good relations with people its not that easy. You need to keep in touch, understand each other, helping one another, or if its the case, loving. Television offers an alternative to this and people see it like a window of escape.

The power of the television also affects the masses. Can provoke riots or waves of enthusiasm. Take example a group of people watching a soccer game; by the way that the game is narrated by the commentator or by the images shown by the cameraman the, the people watching the game may take a turn for violence or celebrating. Political decisions are often made by keeping in mind political ads or news shown on TV.

Everything that television shows us can be right or wrong, depending only on how we understand the message sent by the sender. The process of communication that television is taking part in its a very laborious one: first it announces, we get a preview and only after that we get the full message.

But all this is happening now. We do not now what the future is for television. TV has infinite possibilities and resources but we dont know what human kind will do with the most important media. It can take a turn for good or for worse, the choice is ours.