Marie
Winn’s essay "Television: The Plug-In Drug" explains how family life has changed since TVs were installed in
basically every home. At first, when television was included into family’s
homes, people believed that it would have a positive influence because everyone
is coming together and snuggling in front of the TV. Unfortunately the idea of
TV as a social activity can´t be applied to the 21
st century. Most
homes have more than one TV, so it happens that every family member is watching
a different show at a different time. Winn mentions (p.439), that TV does not
only affect the child itself, but also other circumstances like “the home, the
peer group, the school, the church and culture generally” (p.439). A
significant aspect that TV changed is the quality of life: families lose their
individuality, which was expressed through common activities like games. Also
eating habits are affected. Parents are using television to maintain their private
dinner, while the kids are following their daily TV schedule. Winn explains
(p.441), that not the TV program is important, but the watching itself. Modern
parents think that television is the only way to control kids over a certain
amount of time. Maybe it is a great way but it’s also the easiest. Parents
should be willing to make compromises when it comes to personal life. Family
rituals are also a crucial factor to keep the individuality of a family. Those
rituals concern “mealtime, bedtime, illness and holidays” (p. 442). Furthermore
Winn points out (p. 443), that television affects the way kids communicate with
real people. Since watching TV doesn’t require any eye contact or response,
kids seem passive during conversations with real persons. Besides rituals, many
families lose the ability to solve conflicts. Television helps to avoid
conversations, but only temporarily. Winn explains: “The nature of the family
social life during a program could be described as ‘parallel’ rather than
interactive (…) (p. 445).” At the end
of this essay she also mentions (p. 445), that television is not the only factor
for changes in family life, but it is definitely one that we can control.
When people
talk about Social Change they often don’t consider television as an important
factor. The Internet seems to be much more threatening, but we often don’t
realize how TV manipulates children. Food commercials, for example, give kids a
wrong perception of what meals are made of. Of course the advertisers are
trying to make it sound healthy and natural, but they don’t mention the
artificial and chemical ingredients. This wrong perception will be persistent if
parents don’t teach their children how to eat right.
Winn, M. (2011). Television: The Plug-In Drug. S. Cohen (Ed) 50 Essays. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin's
The topic
of Kindelan’s article is the role of social media in the US midterm elections
in 2010. She questions the advantage of
social networks for voters and the functionality of social networks for our
democratic system. Many voters
now prefer going online in order to get information about their candidates.
This doesn´t necessarily mean that they visit their candidates website, but
they visit blog websites or social networks to discuss and exchange
information. According to Kindelan, the Internet has an unexpected influence on
the elections. A study by the Pew Research Center says, that more than
one-third of the responding persons elected their candidate because of the
information they found on the Internet. Kindelan also argues that this
development could make it easier for extreme political ideas to spread out. She
says, that we have to keep in mind, that not everything on the Internet is
necessarily true. She
collected her information from a study by the Pew Research Center and she
interviewed the report’s author and senior research specialist at Pew Internet
Aaron Smith. This
article again questions the reliability of the Internet. Especially in politics
it’s easy to find wrong information from the Internet, so we should read blogs
carefully and double-check the content before we make our choice based on
Internet sources.
It´s really
interesting how this article outlines, that social media is nothing new. Many
people proscribe new technologies only because they are new, but if we keep the
social exchange aspect in mind, it can turn out to be a real advantage for us.
We can always be sure to have enough information from several sources, so we
can discuss them within a social network, either online or in real terms.
The topic
of Schlosser’s essay is how the advertising industry uses kids as a target for
their commercials. He explains
that kids are not mature enough to understand that not every commercial is
true. Advertisers benefit from that and show children what they want to see in
order to want the product. Of course kids are sometimes too young to purchase
the product by themselves, so they use nagging to get what they want. Even
though the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) tried to ban television commercials,
changes haven’t been made in order to protect our kids. According to the author,
(Schlosser, 2011, p. 357) “outside of school, the typical American child spends
more time watching TV than doing any other activity except sleeping.” Eric
Schlosser collected his information from a book called “Kids As Customers”
(1992) by James U. McNeal. Furthermore Schlosser quotes a marketer, a
sociologist, the head of the Federal Trade Commission and finally former US
president Ronald Reagan.
