Television Viewing Draft #3

Television has become a basic need of the individuals to the extent that more than ninety per cent of households in developed countries have a television set (Sharif 1999). Television has attracted audiences of all ages since the time it was invented (Leigh 2001). According to American Time Use Survey (2003), the public spend more hours per day in watching television than doing other activities such as reading, leisure and sports. In addition, the full-time workers also spend most of their free time in watching television and video or listening to radio (UK Time Use Survey 2000). This shows that the public spend most of their time in front of the television. The society has become more aware of the effects of television viewing, thus leading to arguments on whether television viewing benefits the viewers or not. I strongly believe that television viewing brings more good than harm to the viewers because television programs increase the knowledge, provide an additional dimension to learning and encourage critical thinking skills.

First of all, television viewing provides a wide variety of useful information and knowledge to the viewers. This is proven by Rutherford (2002), he says that television viewers are able to obtain information about the world, culture, animal kingdom and others from the television programs. Besides that, public can learn the ways of solving a complicated scientific equation in an interesting and enjoyable way (Rutherford 2002). Television news programs also provide the information of the current issues that happen in the world to the public (Sharif 1999). Furthermore, according to Sharif (1999), by watching television programs, public are inform about the global problems and disasters that happen in certain area, this can stimulate them to do charity like raising money for the victims of famine in Africa.

Secondly, television programs supply an additional dimension to learning which bring a lot of benefits to the viewers. Leigh (2001) comments that the different and interesting manners of presenting the television programs help the television viewers to understand more about the information provided. Television is also used as a teaching tool. According to Rutherford (2002), the programs, for instance ‘Sesame Street’ which use animation and puppets to teach the pre-schoolers to recognise the colours, numbers, and alphabet letters. Leigh (2001) also states that the children who watch the television programs tend to know more vocabulary. On the other hand, television is an audio-visual medium. With sound and visual effects, students can understand and handle well the information that they have learned from television as compared to the information from books (Leigh 2001).

Thirdly, television programs can encourage critical thinking among the viewers. Television is an interesting and attracting medium. By watching the television programs which related to the matters of human problems for examples, globalisation and homelessness will stimulates the viewers to think more and critically (Leigh 2001). In addition, according to Sharif (1999), he says that family members can gather and discuss on the better solutions to solve the conflict from the television programs. These discussions can “help develop critical thinking, a necessary skill in both social settings and at school” (Sharif 1999, p.34).

As a conclusion, I strongly agree that television viewing brings more advantages than disadvantages to the viewers. Public should know that watching television programs will benefit them in different ways like increase the information and knowledge, have an additional dimension to learning as well as develop in critical thinking.