How Newspapers, Radio, Television and Internet Functions - Essay Example

Newspapers, radio, television and internet are the killers of human in humans. Those are means of escaping from life and real people. We are accustomed to be among masses. We are used to trust mass media more than our friends and families. We are freed from the difficult tasks of thinking critically, communicating with real people and being creative. It is much easier to switch off staring at the screen or communicate with far away strangers appearing in your favorite chats under invented names. The products of the progress and its promoters, mass media destroy the very essence of being human. First there were newspapers. They informed people of the state of affairs and public believed them. Publishers sold scandals and negative emotions and public got depended. Papers served as a wonderful way out of an awkward situation. If you did not want to communicate with people in a public place, you read a newspaper. A father, afraid of communication with his children, could hide himself behind a morning paper during breakfast and then escape in reading evening papers. Today papers and magazines serve as a source of propaganda of way of lives. Reading certain magazines you feel belonging to certain groups. Radio helps you to passively entertain yourself both in free time and on your way to work. Television and internet absorb most of time and attention of millions of people in the world. A TV-set is an obligatory thing in every house. People get surprised learning that you do not watch TV. Internet is a new plague of the humanity. Seemingly inoffensive and enormously useful at first sight, it creates a generation of online people, afraid of living communication and unable to perceive a concrete person who could become a partner. Marie Winn in her book The Plug-In Drug: Television, Children and the Family provides keen observations of the impact of television on the life of modern people and families. It is a well known fact that a family is the smallest cell of the society. It is here that we start our life journey, learning how to deal with the world and people. Certainly, the problem of parents and children has always existed. Even Juliet Capulet found it difficult to explain herself with her mother and communicated with her parents mostly through the nurse. Yet, the Capulets did have a chance to inform their offspring about their demands, hopes and displeasure. The family also had some rituals uniting them into a family, different from the rest families in Verona. Modern children often learn their parents’ attitudes due to the reactions to the programs, talk shows and soap-operas. Yet, even this is a rare case, while families often watch TV in different rooms. As Winn fairy states television deteriorates the quality of our life. There are several dreary aspects to be touched upon, including lack of communication between members of a family, loss of family uniqueness, domination of television in the process of decision making, influence of television on the children’s perception of the world, people’s inability to interact with real life. Moreover, mass media are the major carriers of propagandistic ideas and false values imposed on the hypnotized public. We are caught into media’s net and do not notice how they destroy everything human and important in us. Winn provides a number of examples of the deteriorative effect of television on the life of families. She shows how television determines the schedule of children and parents, who sacrifice living communication with each other, relatives and friends for the sake of another TV show. Families do not gather as they used to, and if they do, women discuss their favorite serials. Children do not play active games outdoors (only video and online ones); they spend little time outside observing the living world but sit in front of TV-sets (or computers). Watching TV, families have no time for sharing their troubles and plans. Meals pass in silence, all the eyes being fixed on the TV-set. Television takes parents from children. Earlier families had to invent entertainment for the free time. Now they have only to switch on TV-sets. I remember awful weekends as my parents were watching TV without paying any attention to me. I felt lonely and abandoned. I wanted to talk to them, to have some fun and play some games as we used to as I was little. I dreamt of picnics and slow walks in the parks. Instead, my dearest people were sofa-ridden hypnotically gazing at the screen, their will and mind paralyzed and captured by strange and scandal talk shows having nothing to do with real life. A friend of mine told me a sad story of her communication with mother. The girl fell in love and lost her virginity. She was awfully frightened, but decided to share the news with her mother. The task turned out to be complex technically. The girl’s mother was watching TV and paid no attention to her anxious child. My friend managed to turn her attention with great difficulties in the pause for commercials. As she reported her astonishing news her mother had little time for comments or expressing emotions – the pause was short and soon the woman was wholly absorbed by the film again. Children, deprived of their parent’s attention, have little opportunity to learn how to interact with the outside world. Parents hide away from their everyday problems. They prefer this passive vegetable existence to life. Children see few alternatives. Nobody teach them how to create and play and enjoy movement and communication with people. Winn demonstrates that even grown-ups feel uneasy when returning to the communication with real people after passively watching TV for several hours. Real people are too complicated and you never know what to expect from them. Real people can hurt and they require your being inventive, attentive and make efforts. Children find it even harder. After watching TV for the major parts of their lives young people switch to the online communication, another substitute of reality. If someone hurts you here, you can easily disappear, stop contacts. Besides, nobody knows you personally, nothing threatens peace of your mind in real life. Television undermines families and normal relations. It is a wonderful loophole for escape. When the family starts having problems, its members avoid discussions on the pretence of watching TV. In some cases it is a chance to get rid of children. While they are watching TV, parents have time for themselves and can enjoy the life of almost a childless couple. A demonstrative case can be found in Winn’s book. One mother switched on a TV-set each time her children started quarrelling. She realized that it was not right, however, the temptation was too strong. Meanwhile, mass media poison our minds. We all are driven into certain frames beneficial for politicians and business. We have forgotten how to think critically. We easily believe facts reported from the blue screens. We live according to standards learnt from mass media. We are the society of consumers, reminding of cattle prepared for slaughter. We are in constant strive for strong emotions propagated by talk shows and soap operas. Even grown-ups follow the patterns. Children know no other life. As a result, we get a high rate of suicides between teenagers, high rate of divorces between people unable to build relations, high rate of aggression and cruel murders conducted by teens. We see the world through the prism of mass media. Strong emotions (usually negative) are sold by mass media and we pay for them with our lives and happiness. Few can leave the game. The major part of the humanity lives drugged by mass media, where television continues playing a decisive role. Communication is the essential feature of humanity. This is what distinguishes us from animals. Humans are proved to be social creatures. Mass media offers a substitute to living communication. It makes people closed inside themselves, creating an artificial resemblance of real life and world. It is difficult to imagine the world without radio or television, magazines and internet. A modern person feels lost and cast away in case of being deprived of these sources of information. Information hunger seems awful to us. However, the major problem is that we are not able to filter and limit this information. We are not protected against its influence and are not taught how to deal with it properly. We obediently allow journalists and marketing specialists set programs in our heads. We passively drift through our lives, hidden from the reality. We forget who we are, lost among artificial pictures of the world, slides offered by mass media. Read More