Essay "TV ADDICTION" for ADP/B.Sc English Students
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| TV ADDICTION (Essay for ADP/B.Sc English Students) |
We are all conscious of the fact that
television has become a powerful addiction of pleasure in our society. If
people can admit that they are ‘mystery book addicts’ or ‘cookie addicts’ ,
they should also admit that some of them are TV addicts. It is possible that
television viewing may be considered ignorable just as child’s keenness in
eating cookies is not blameworthy. It is also possible that the abnormal
enthusiasm in television viewing may be considered censurable / condemnable to
the extent of serious category of destructive drug addiction. Television
viewing may thus be either a harmless habit if it is within a normal range. It
may be harmful addiction if it trespasses normal range of interest.
When we think about addiction to alcohol or
drugs , we tend to focus on its negative aspects. Similarly we ignore the
aspects of pleasure like feelings that a drug addict gets and enjoys. Of course
normal life does not provide such a high pleasure. An addicts inability to
perform without his addictive substance is certainly a dismaying aspect. It is
said ,
“A man’s dependence upon a
certain experience of pleasure and his increasing inability to function
normally with out it , is certainly objectionable , as it hampers the smooth
running of life both individually and collectively. "
Addiction thus becomes a cancer when an addict
does not feel normal without his addictive substance. An addict wants to repeat
his pursuit of pleasure again and again. He feels that without getting his
particular pleasure , his life is not complete. He can sacrifice all other
pleasures to this one alone. Consequently , under the spell of his addictive
experience , an addict’s life gets particularly distorted.
Moreover an addict desires his addictive
substance , gets it , enjoys it but he is never really satisfied. No doubt
temporarily he may get satisfied but he soon begins to crave again. It is
certain that a heroin addict leads a damaged life in the sense that his ever
increasing need for heroin is ever increasing prevents him from working
peacefully in his office or factory , from maintaining smoothly his public
relationship and from developing normally in his particular sphere of life. So
addiction of this sort dehumanizes and addict’s life.
A television addict forgets the real world and
enters into a passive mental state. Absorption in television programs make the
T.V. addict defer to the anxieties of reality. He over estimates his television
watching in the same way as an alcoholic
; “I can cut it out at any time I
want.” In actual practice , instead of diminishing his addiction , he increases it. He says that
he will just finish viewing this particular program but in actuality , he
spends hour after hour watching this program after that. A heavy viewer , TV
addict , in particular finds television irresistible and when his TV set is on
, he cannot turn it off. Even if the TV addict may like to turn off the set ,
the energy goes out of his arms and so he sits there for hours and hours. In a
way , a heavy TV viewer’s life is as imbalanced by television addiction as a
drug addict’s or an alcoholic’s certainly is.
TV addiction consumes unnecessary time. This
loss of time entails adverse effect on the lives of so many heavy viewers. They
forget the profitable ways of utilizing their time. Their television addiction
, distorts their sense of time utilization. It cannot be denied that television
addiction makes people think that other experiences are vague and unreal. It
reduces normal opportunities of communication and thus weakens human
relationship. Even too much TV viewing does not satisfy its addict.
