Peer Review Essay # 2

Essay # 2 draft
Television Should Not Interfere With Family Quality
As new technologies grow more and more, television has almost reached its highest level in technologies. With the price of television getting so cheap, every family own more than one television set in the household. The more television the family has, the more distant the family members grow apart in relationship. After reading the essay, Television: The Plug-In Drug by Marie Winn, I definitely agree with her point of view about watch television. We should not let the television takes up all of our precious family time together; we have to decide for ourselves which is more important in our lives, the high techs or the relationship.
When the television first came out, everyone was expecting to see the change in a good way such as reuniting family together to watch television. However, no one would be able to foresee about the trend of our children spend time watching the TV. Children were consumed by the media causing the lacking of parenting concern. People believed that “television always enters a pattern if influences that already exist.” However, for Winn, she saw it a different way.
“Television did not merely influence the child; it deeply influenced that ‘pattern of influences.’”
Nowadays, people all use television as one of the information machine to deliver messages to each others. It has contributed the world. People were sucked into it.
The first point Winn made was about the quality of life in the effect of the television. Truly, television keeps family together but it greatly destroys the family special bond. That bond “depends to a great extent on what a family does, what special rituals, games, recurrent jokes, familiar songs, and shared activities.” It seems like we all accept the fact that television is an absolute necessary habit which we can not let go. Now it becomes a drug that we are so addictive to it. Also in this section, Winn mentioned about how the adult’s needs are more fulfilled than the children’s needs by watching television. “The kids were effectively shunted away and rendered untroublesome, while their parents enjoyed a life as undemanding as that of nay childless couple.” Winn believed that the demand of the young children should be taken in consideration instead of the adult's because that is “the future which the family depends.” Quality of life has become the demand of selfish people. Life in a household has become like a caretaking institution.
Winn also talked about how family rituals were affected by watching TV. Well, those rituals such as mealtime, bed time, and holiday time can’t survive without the interfering of the present of television. During mealtime, the TV would be turned on. The kids might be watching cartoon or the adult may just watch the news or favorite shows. Bed time is leading by letting the children watch the last show of their age. Holiday time can be shared by watching TV about a game, a movie, etc. Families have “been reduced to such a sameness.” We hardly find anymore of those rituals and they are becoming uncommon to all of us.