Television Addiction Related to Children
By: Edward • Essay • 744 Words • January 20, 2010 • 945 Views
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According to Rita Dove, the author of “Loose Ends,” and “Television Addiction,” by Marie Winn. Both authors often share the same the views about television. But television addiction is more expressed in Ms. Winn’s essay. However, Ms. Dove speaks of a more personal experience with her daughter, and how the television is an issue in her household. Although, Ms.Dove says in her essay, “For years the following scene would play daily at our house: Home from school, my daughter would have her backpack off her shoulder and let it thud to the hall floor, then jump her jacket on top of the pile” (Dove 503).
However, when I first read this I thought to myself about my habits and how I do things around the house. What Ms. Dove talk about my mom tells me the same things each and everyday. It’s sort of a recording that never ends. Although, I always try to pick up my stuff before she gets home, but it never happens because either my mind gets easily distracted.
Moreover, Ms. Winn compares television to drugs, and drinking addictions. Furthermore, Ms.Winn points out, “When we think of addiction to drugs or alcohol, we frequently focus on negative aspects, ignoring the pleasures that accompany drinking and drug taking”(Winn 505). When I first read this statement I thought to myself for some people there are some good aspects to drinking and drugs. For example, Ms. Winn says, “And yet the essence of any serious addiction is a pursuit of pleasure a search for a “high” that normally life does not supply.”
Ms.Winn also lightens the readers by talking about how people become addicted to television she says, “The self-confessed television addict often feels he “ought” to do other things-but the fact doesn’t read and doesn’t plant his garden or sew or crochet or play games or have conversations means that those activities are no longer as desirable as television viewing” (Winn 506). She gives reasoning of why people become addicts and I think it strengthens her essay.
In addition, Ms. Rita Dove also explains in her essay that, “It is not that we confuse TV with reality, but that we prefer it to reality-the manageable struggle resolved in twenty-six minutes, the witty repartee with the family circle instead of the grunts and silence common to real families; the sharpened conflict and defined despair instead of vague anxiety and invisible enemies” (Dove 504). This