12-1 Is TV A Good Or Bad Thing?

Is TV a good or a bad influence? Well, most people would say it's a bad influence, but my university lecturer, when I was in university quite some time ago, had a very interesting take. He said that media doesn't influence society, and that these behaviors are learned. He used the example of Japan at that time having the lowest crime rate in the world and the most violent media in the world, including video games, manga, which are the comics, and in general, Japanese TV.

So yeah, there are two ways to think about it. Most people would immediately say it's a bad influence, but maybe it's not. I don't think TV is a bad thing, but I never ever watch it because it's extremely addictive, or I'm extremely, I can get very addicted to it. If I turn on the TV, I will watch it for two hours, but I'll just flip through the channels without actually stopping on any one thing.

So I never turn on the TV. I think TV can be good and bad. First of all, it can be good for example, the learning channels, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, such channels like those. However, of course, there is bad points to TV, such as violence and fighting, which should not be watched by smaller children. In fact, in my country, they put the more violent scenes and violent channels after 8 p.m. once the children have gone to bed.

TV is both good and bad. It's not really the TV's fault what people are putting on it. Some of the children's programs I see are really good for kids. I used to sit my niece in front of a child's program, and she picked up her ABCs pretty quickly, and she sung along with the songs and everything. So I think that was pretty good. But of course, you have your programs that are a bit too violent, maybe, but you have learning opportunities, and you have your nonsense.

Is TV a good thing or a bad thing? Well, for me, I think it's wonderful because it's a form of something that entertains me without asking anything in return. For young children, I think it is the cause of a lot of desensitization, but I don't think it is the sole cause of what's going on in the world and should be blamed for what is, like the shootings and everything that's negative happening right now.

I think television's a very good thing, not so much for what people can see, but for what television can do. TV requires a lot of skilled workers and a lot of people to put on a production, so television just creates a lot of jobs. And in every country, you need people from your own country to run the television stations, to be the cameramen, to do the editing. You need local people to be the actors, technicians, things like that. So TV is not an industry where you can export jobs, and it's an industry where basically a lot of jobs are provided for local people. So yeah, I think television's a pretty good thing.