Nikolay Gigov September 21st, 2003
#0330439
Essay responding to “Television Addiction” by Marie Winn
In her essay “Television Addiction”, Marie Winn considers television viewing as a serious addiction comparable to drugs and alcohol addictions. According to her, the television experience gets us into an enjoyable and inactive mental state so that we ignore the worries and the concerns of the real world. By giving various examples of how significantly the “small screen” may influence people’s lives, the author points out different negative effects of watching TV. For instance, she states that heavy viewers tend to ignore all other activities in order to spend countless hours in front the “tube”. Therefore, the lives of these people become as imbalanced and disordered as a drug addict’s. She claims that the watching habit destroys our sense of time and, as a result, seriously weakens our relationships with the others. I strongly disagree with Winn on this point because I consider television as a wonderful tool for improving our communication skills. Furthermore, nowadays, television is one of the largest sources of information.