Table of Contents

Synopsis 3
Introduction 3
Background 3
Discussion 4
Media 4
Theoretical analysis of media 4
Structural - Functional Paradigm 4
Manifest functions 5
Latent functions 5
Dysfunctions 5
Social - Conflict Paradigm 5
Symbolic Interaction Paradigm 6
The truth about Television/Cable TV 6
Alcohol 7
Violence 7
Commercialism 7
Achievement and Intelligence 8
Five paths to Cognitive Damage 8
Social Interaction 10
Obesity 11
Attention Deficit Disorder 11
Conclusion 12
Recommendations 13
References 15

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Synopsis

There are few societies in current times, even among the more traditional cultures, which
remain completely untouched by the mass media. Electronic communication is accessible
even to those who are completely illiterate and in the most isolated areas of third world
countries it is common to find people owning radios, or even television sets.

Newspapers, journals etc flourished at the end of 18th century onwards, but were confined
to a fairly small readership. It was not until a century afterwards that such printed media
became part of the day-to-day experience of millions of people, influencing their attitudes
and opinions. The spread of mass media involving printed documents was soon
accompanied by electronic communication. Children spend the equivalent of almost a
hundred school days per year watching television. Adults watch almost as much.
Research indicates that if a news report on television differs from a newspaper account,
more than twice as many people will believe the televised version as the newspaper one.

A vast amount of research work has been carried out in an attempt to analyze the
influence of particular television programs or type of television programs on the attitudes
of children and adults. Most of this research is not conclusive in its implications. It is still
not agreed, for example, how far the portrayal of violence promotes aggressive behavior
among children. But it cannot be doubted that the media profoundly influences people’s
attitudes and outlooks. They convey a whole variety of information, which individuals
would not otherwise acquire. Newspapers, books, radio, television, films, recorded music
and popular magazines bring us into close contact with experiences which we would
otherwise have little awareness of.

Introduction

This report is basically about how television/Cable TV has become a part of everyday life
in ways that are not acceptable and are highly disgraceful and harmful for our growth as a
nation and country.

Background

Although there are some notable exceptions, analysis of television programs designed for
children conform to the findings about children’s books. Studies of the most frequently
watched cartoons show that virtually all the leading figures are males and that males
dominate the active pursuits depicted. Similar images are found in the commercials that
appear at regular intervals throughout the programs.

The mass media forms of communication directed to large audiences also socialize us.
Radio, television, newspapers and magazines do not merely entertain us; they also shape
our attitudes, values and other basic orientations to life.

Television has become the dominant medium and watching television is a favorite
activity of almost everyone, you and I included. The average adult watches 15 hrs. of

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television a week. School children now spend more time in front of a television than they
do in school and most children spend more time watching television than interacting with
their parents. Many parents use television as an electronic babysitter, this was first
common in the West but now is becoming increasingly popular among the households of
Pakistan as well. They do not know however know that the values presented on it may
sharply conflict with their own and even if they know they under rate the power of TV as
a socializing agent. Since most children are exposed to so much TV, it is not surprising
that some social analysts have become concerned about the content of what children see.
As Joshua Meyrowita (1984) has pointed out that to use television as an electronic
babysitter is equivalent to a broad social decision to allow young children to be present at
wars & funerals, courtships & seductions, criminal plots & cocktail parties etc. Television
exposes children to many topics and behaviors that adults have spent centuries trying to
keep hidden from them.

Violence on TV has become a special concern. Researchers have found that by the age of
18, the average child has watched about 18,000 people being strangled, stabbed, shot,
poisoned, blown up, drowned, run over, beaten to death or otherwise ingeniously done in
(Messner1986). The big question of course is what effects does television violence have
on its viewers? Perhaps it simply drains off aggressive impulses through fantasy.
Researchers have probed this question for decades with mixed results. Increasingly,
however, studies indicate that a heavy diet of TV violence does promote aggressive
behavior in children. Studies in the West have identified a circular path. Both boys and
girls who experience a heavy diet of televised violence are more aggressive while
aggressive children are less popular with their peers and spend more solitary time
watching more violent programs. (Eron 1982).

Discussion

To understand what television/Cable TV is and how it is affecting us as a nation, we shall

first discuss media in general.

Media

A society’s means for communication begins with the different forms of media. Radio,
television, printed materials and the Internet are just a few resources that people use to
stay in touch with everything that is happening in today’s world.

Theoretical analysis of media

We’ll start of by a theoretical analysis of media where we shall examine the structural-
functional, social- conflict, and symbolic interaction analyses of media.

Structural-Functional Paradigm - a framework for building theory that sees society as a

complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability.

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It is a paradigm that looks at social issues through a macro-level orientation – a broad
focus on social structures that shape society as a whole. (Macro level takes in the big
picture)

It has three functions;

Manifest functions - the recognized and intended consequences of any social pattern.

Examples are;

• Source of information (ng,animal planet, reality zone )

• Entertainment( music, game shows, dramas, theatre)
• Government News(Geo, ARY, bbc ,ajj , cnn)

Latent functions – the unrecognized and unintended consequences of any social pattern.

Examples are;

• Job Resource 106.5 fm per , HRM walay shows kerytay hain tv stuff, seminars
• Homework Assignments
• Community Events alhamra mai plays

Dysfunctions – a social pattern’s undesirable consequences for the operation of society.

Examples are;

• Slander
• Organized crime
• Libel
.

Hence the structural- functional paradigm asks how the media has contributed to the
stability of our society.

Social- Conflict Paradigm – a framework for building theory that sees society as an arena
of inequality that generates conflict and change

The following key terms are used to analyze culture from the social – conflict
perspective: power, authority, inequality, competition, and exploitation.

The social – conflict paradigm of media looks at the inequalities regarding affordability
and negative uses of advances in the media for some people within out society.

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Examples are;

• Competition (Cable TV) healthy competiyion hai ya nai thru channels..India

promote ker raha hai…hum nai ker rahay?
• Exploitation (Negative Reporting of the News)
• Authority (Affordability/ Internet)
• Inequalities (Money/DVDs)

(This paradigm also looks at social issues through a macro – level orientation.)

Symbolic Interaction Paradigm – a framework for building that sees society as the
product of everyday interactions of individuals.

This paradigm looks at social issues through a micro- level orientation- a close-up focus
on social interaction in specific situations.

Examples are;

• Newspapers
• Mail
• Global Internet
• Television
• Radio
• Computers
• Cable TV

(Symbol – anything that carried a particular meaning recognized by people who share a
culture.)

http://www.dmacc.edu/instructors/gdtitchener/Welcome_files/Socialtheory_files/media.s
wf

The truth about Television/Cable TV

As the cable channels that we see in our household these days include none other than
what the Americans see in their local television channels (excluding the Indian and other
country channels), we can easily make a statement that what happens out there due to the
viewing shall undoubtedly happen here. Based on the researches that have been
conducted over the years, following is a list of some of the facts that came to light
regarding television viewing;

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Alcohol

Alcohol is the most consumed beverage on prime time television shows. Television
characters drink alcohol twice as often as they drink tea or coffee, 14 times as frequently
as soft drinks, and 15 times more often than water.

Each year, students spend $5.5 billion on alcohol - more than they spend on soft drinks,
tea, milk, juice, coffee, and books combined. Alcohol is implicated in more than 40% of
all academic problems and 28% of all dropouts.

On a typical weekend in America, an average of one teenager dies every two hours in a
car crash involving alcohol.

Violence

In 1993, the average child living in the United States watched 10,000 murders, assaults,
and other violent acts on television, and 1997 that number climbed to 12,000 and is still
rising.

The Surgeon General's 2001 report cited statistical links between television watching and
violent behavior similar in strength to the evidence linking smoking and lung cancer.

Commercialism

Cable aside, the television industry is not in the business of selling programs to
audiences. It is in the business of selling audiences to advertisers

Gene DeWitt, chairman of one of the leading firms selling television advertising time
admitted, "There's no point in moralizing whether this is a good or a bad thing.
Television is a business whose purpose is gathering audience."

In 1997 the average U.S. child watched television 25 hours a week, he spent 260 full
hours (or the equivalent of 6.5 weeks of forty-hour-per-week shifts) just watching
commercials.

This is significant when we consider that the most essential product of the advertising
industry is hunger. That is, commercials are intended to create a feeling of lack in the
viewer, a deep ache that can only be assuaged by purchasing the product. As Dr. Neil
Postman, chairman of the Department of Communication Arts at New York University,
points out, "What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but
what is wrong about the buyer." So we hand our children over to Madison Avenue to be
told, hundreds of hours a year, how hungry, bored, ugly, and unpopular they are and will

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continue to be until they spend (or persuade their parents to spend) a few more dollars.
And then we wonder why our children feel so hungry, bored, ugly, and unpopular, and
why they are so needy.

Achievement and Intelligence

Japanese researchers conducted some of the earliest research on the relationship between
television and impaired academic achievement. In 1962, they published findings that
reading skills declined among Japanese fifth to seventh graders as soon as their family
acquired a television set.

Two years later, the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
conducted the first large-scale American study. The survey, covering 650,000 students in
4,000 U.S. schools, included a handful of questions about television viewing patterns.
Government officials were surprised to discover that the more television students
watched, the lower their achievement scores.

Five Paths to Cognitive Damage

In the wake of the California surveys, researchers began to ask why exposure to the
stimulating and potentially enlightening content of television should retard achievement
and IQ. Even more confusing, studies revealed that television reduced educational
aspirations. These studies demonstrated that, even though TV programs portrayed an
overabundance of doctors, lawyers, and other professionals, the more television children
watched, the less time they wanted to spend in school. The effect was especially
pronounced among adolescents who, as they watched television, lowered not only their
educational aspirations but also their professional hopes. The more TV a child watched,
the lower status the job he eventually wanted to pursue. Something about the medium
seemed to undermine whatever positive content television offered. Five explanations
emerged.

First, Harvard investigators confirmed that television ate up time children would
otherwise have used to study or read for pleasure. They found, for instance, that children
from homes with no television were 11% more likely to do homework on weekdays and
23% more likely to do homework on Sundays. Professor George Comstock of Syracuse
University, arguably the leading scholar in the study of television, wrote in 1999,
"Learning to read is often hard work for a child, whereas television viewing is
comparatively undemanding. Children are certainly tempted to watch television instead
of mastering reading, and those who succumb will be permanently impaired
scholastically."

In a spontaneous experiment in 1982, a New Jersey elementary school announced a "No

TV Week." According to the New York Times report of the event, "Students in every
class started spending more time reading books and talking to their friends and families.”
Two years later the entire city of Farmington, Connecticut voluntarily gave up TV for one
month. When Wall Street Journal reporters interviewed Farmington residents, both adults

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and children most often mentioned reading as the activity they used to fill the newly
available hours. Children who do not practice reading find themselves "impaired
scholastically," they do not enjoy school, and, recognizing how much preparatory
schooling the elite professions demand, they scale down their aspirations.

A second way that the medium itself depresses achievement and IQ (and perhaps thus
aspiration) is by making children sleepy. Not only do children stay up past their bedtimes
watching television, a team at Brown University found that children's sleep onset time
was prolonged when they watched television anytime during the previous day or evening,
producing shortened sleep duration and daytime sleepiness. The researchers suggested
that at bedtime children conjure forth "excessively violent and/or stimulating" television
scenes viewed in the last 24 to 48 hours. Thus, even children who went to bed on time
were less alert if they had watched television the previous day.

Marie Winn, a Wall Street Journal columnist, discovered another way television makes
young children overtired. She writes:

Today parents do not "work" to keep the nap. Instead, with relief in sight second only to
the relief they feel when their child is asleep at night, parents work on their young
children to encourage them to watch television for reliable periods of time, a far easier
job than working on a child to have a nap.

Third, television's quick cuts alleviate the need to concentrate. George Comstock
explains, "The pacing of much television suppresses impulse control and the ability to
attend to the slower pace of schooling." New York University's Neil Postman reports that
the average length of a shot on network television is only 3.5 seconds, "so that the eye
never rests, always has something new to see." Robert MacNeil, executive editor and co-
anchor of the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, writes that the idea "is to keep everything
brief, not to strain the attention of anyone but instead to provide constant stimulation
through variety, novelty, action, and movement. You are required to pay attention to no
concept, no character, and no problem for more than a few seconds at a time."

In the famous 1854 debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, Douglas
led off with a three-hour opening statement, which Lincoln took four hours to rebut.
During the televised presidential debates of 1987, each candidate took five minutes to
address questions like "What is your policy in Central America?" before his opponent
launched into a sixty-second rebuttal. This sort of parody is as intellectually taxing a
presentation as anyone will see on television.

Since our children sit passively while the television dances, their ability to become deeply
involved with books, school teachers, and other less frenetic sources of wisdom -- their
ability to think -- atrophies. It should be no wonder that they abandon books, manifest
lower intelligence quotients, fail to achieve academically, and have depressed
professional aspirations.

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Fourth, television impedes imagination. A study of gifted fourth, fifth, and sixth graders,
included in the Surgeon General's report, shows that watching a range of television shows
- from cartoons to "educational television" -- depresses the students' subsequent creativity
scores. Commenting on experiments in which children went on television "diets,"
researchers at the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry write:

Experience has shown that children who cease watching television do play in ways
clearly suggesting the use of an imaginary world. Resuming their viewing, the children
decrease this kind of play. Research findings also suggest that children who are light
television viewers report significantly more imaginary playmates than those who are
heavy viewers.

Harvard professors Dorothy Singer and Jerome Singer discovered at least one mechanism
by which television corrodes creativity: Viewers never need to conjure up an image.
"Children accustomed to heavy television viewing process both the auditory and the
visual cues afforded by that medium simultaneously," they write, "and may become lax in
generating their own images" when reading or listening to a story.

A fifth explanation emerged from the work of Harvard University Professor T. Berry
Brazelton. Brazelton hooked newborn babies up to electroencephalographs and then
exposed them to a flickering light source similar to a television but with no images.
Fifteen minutes into their exposure, the babies stopped crying and produced sleep
patterns on the EEG, even though their eyes were still open and observing the
light.Brazelton's experiment revealed that the medium itself, with no content, acts
directly on the brain to suppress mental activity. The Group for the Advancement of
Psychiatry confirmed Brazelton's finding in 1982. They reported that the brain waves
generated while watching even the most exciting shows were those of low attention
states. The researchers found that while subjects viewed television, "output of alpha
rhythms increased, indicating they were in a passive state, as if they were just sitting in
the dark."

Every activity a child engages in during his busy day refines some set of skills. Reading
is practice; writing is practice; sports is practice; engaging in fantasy games is practice;
and interacting with people is practice. All these activities in some way help prepare a
child for the challenges of adult life. Television is also practice, but not for any activity.
Television is practice for inactivity. When children watch television they are practicing
sleeping - often for hours every day. One does not need a Ph.D. to realize that this could
have all sorts of deleterious effects on cognitive development and later aspirations.

Social Interaction

Psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim suggests that television retards social skills not just by
depriving children of playtime, but also by accustoming them to unrealistically
stimulating characters:

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Children who have been taught, or conditioned, to listen passively most of the day to the
warm verbal communications coming from the TV screen, to the deep emotional appeal
of the so-called TV personality, are often unable to respond to real persons because they
arouse so much less feeling than the skilled actor.

Obesity

Television makes children fat. Harvard University researchers discovered that the odds of
a child becoming obese rise 12 to 20% for each daily hour of television he watches.
Epidemiologists also agree that watching two or more hours of television daily is a global
marker for high risk of pediatric hypercholesterolemia.

...the snacks children consume while watching television are overwhelmingly high in fat,
cholesterol, salt, and sugar, and low in vitamins, minerals, and fiber. The U.S. Surgeon
General attributes these unhealthful snacking habits to the success of television
advertising. He writes that the average American child sees 2,500 commercials a year for
"high-calorie, high-sugar, low nutrition products." He also reveals that 70% of food
advertisements are for foods high in fat, cholesterol, sugar, and salt, while only 3% are
for fruits and vegetables.

Consistent with the Surgeon General's theory, epidemiologists at the University of

Minnesota surveying children's Saturday morning television recently discovered that
56.5% of all commercials on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and Nickelodeon advertised food
products, and the most frequently advertised product was high-sugar cereal. Comparing
the food products advertised on TV with the U.S. Department of Agriculture
recommendations for pediatric diet, the researchers found that "the diet depicted in
Saturday morning television programming is the antithesis of what is recommended for
healthful eating for children." They further observed that children see a food commercial
about every five minutes on Saturday morning TV, and that the main explicit messages
used to sell food products are taste and the promise of a free toy.

Attention Deficit Disorder

...Then came the report from the Yale University Family Television Research and
Consultation Center: "Sesame Street creates a psychological orientation in children that
leads to a shortened attention span, a lack of reflectiveness, and an expectation of rapid
change in the broader environment." The Yale researchers warned that "well intentioned
parents who allow their children to watch nothing but Sesame Street...might actually be
encouraging over-stimulation and frenetic behavior."

http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/TVtruth.htm

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Conclusion

Based on what has been discussed above I’d agree that in the 90’s cable television
entered in our houses and with the passage of time it has become a part of our lives. Now
it is common that people in almost every house have get access to cable TV. The 24 hours
availability of international TV channels is affecting the life style, attitude and mentality
of people at large. Children are getting some special influences and effects from it, as
they are now expose towards many such things in little ages which are even new for their
parents.

The effects of cable television on children are both positive and negative. It depends upon
the type of channels which children use to watch. Through cable TV they can get more
informative material, which can add to their knowledge. But normally we switch on TV
just for entertainment. That’s why children in our society most of the time think that TV
is tool of entertainment and amusement. When they want escape from studies they sit in
front of TV and look for entertainment programs.

Although I have described the American exposure of channels on the youth above, most
of the children are attracted towards the Indian TV channels because their language is
about same but there is a lot of difference in the culture and ethical values. So there is
great difference in their programs also. Children are very much attracted towards the
glamorized Indian programs. When they watch there a different life style and culture they
get confuse because there is a lot of difference between the environment that they watch
on TV, and in which they live. As a result they start adopting different things from TV
with out knowing its impact.

The language codes, dressing style, way of walking and talking, attitudes, hence the
whole life style of children starts to change. One can commonly find children speaking in
the style of any Indian actor. Their vocabulary is also changing. They easily use Hindi
words in their routine talks. And above all they are becoming more and more familiar
with Hindu customs and religious festivals. This is a big disaster of cable TV that a child
may not know in detail about any Islamic issue but he knows what is done in Holy,
Dewali, and Baysakhi etc. He sings Indian songs instead of singing national songs which
about two to three decades ago were on the tongue of every child; the result a complete
loss of patriotism in our youth. He also knows the names of almost all Indian TV, Film
actors, singers and anchors instead of our own heroes; he is bound to know about Gandhi
but not Quaid e Azam. A distance is building up between children and our own traditions,
culture and values.

Along with entertainment program Cartoons are most favorite thing for children to watch
on TV. It is a big mistake of parents that they leave children in front of TV for hours to
watch cartoons. Parents think that they are watching a childish program which will not
create any harmful or negative effect on children. But if they analyze cartoons they will
come to that there is lot of violence and vulgarity in cartoons. Look at the favorite
channel of cartoons “Cartoon Network”. There are so many cartoons in which they use

11
indecent dressing, abuse language; the structures of different characters are also made
very vulgar like in “Cow & Chicken”, “Johnny Bravo”, “Flintstones” and the most
favorite program “Tom & Jerry” consists mostly on violence. When a child gets
continuous exposure to such programs, he may tries to practice it in real life because in
cartoons they never feel the essence of pain resulting from any bomb blast or accident.
All these things are shown in very funny way in cartoons, which attract children.
Children who watch more cartoons become violent in very unobservable way.

In this way our ethical values are destroying. Another bad effect of cable TV is especially
on students. Now they have more channels to watch on TV so they spend more time in
watching TV neglecting their studies. Students most of the time discusses with friend the
stories of Indian Dramas (Star plus), Movies; or any song or program.

It is the duty of parents to have a check on the programs that their children are watching.
In most of the houses it is common routine that parents them selves watch cable TV with
great interest and their children also sit with them. They do not realize that there is a great
difference in their and children’s mentality. They know what is good and what is bad but
a child has a very raw mind and he accept every thing very quickly. So parents have to
give sacrifice for the betterment of their children that the program which they think can
negatively affect their child should not be watched in their home.

In this global village one can watch any thing happening in any part of the world and it is
not possible to stop the flow of information. But it is very important to have a check on
what is coming to us and what would be the impact of it. Especially children who are
going to build the future of our country must have very clear mind, free from outer
influence. In this regard parents have to play a very sensitive and responsible role.

http://pakistanreview.com/Articles/impact_of_cableTV_onkids.htm

Recommendations

The discussion regarding the quality of children's television in many ways obscures the
larger issues of how much time children should spend watching television and what kinds
of television should be made available to them. Child development experts caution that
smaller children (aged two and up) be allowed no more than two hours of television per
day. Children younger than two years old, they say, should be allowed no television at all.

Parents wishing to avoid "television addiction" in their children should take steps to limit
the child's access to the family's set early on, and maintain the restricted viewing with
both consistency and self-discipline. Experts advise keeping the television not in the
family's main room but in an out-of-the-way part of the house, such as the basement rec
room or upstairs guest bedroom. While this may put a hamper on parent's accessibility to
enjoy the programming, the time available for family bonding and interaction will grow
proportionately.

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Experts also caution parents to make their child's television viewing specific to a certain
program, and refrain from allowing the TV to run as "background noise" in the family
room or during family time. Parents should also watch the programs with the children, to
make sure they understand its content and to answer questions the children might have.
Recording programs, so that parents can pause to discuss, is also a way to increase
understanding.

http://searchwarp.com/swa241109.htm

Another suggestion is to NOT have a TV in every room. If you control the number of
TVs, and how much the TV is watched, you wont have too many problems. DVR the
shows you like. Watch them after the kids are in bed, or while kids are with someone
else.

You don’t have to have cable and all those things if you don’t want. There is actually a
huge selection of DVDs for children. Some are just fun, some are educational.

Another biggest piece of advice is to watch EVERYTHING before allowing your

children. What everyone else says is fine, might not be to you. What everyone else says is
awful, might be just fine to you.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080106165545AA74myL

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 References

http://www.dmacc.edu/instructors/gdtitchener/Welcome_files/Socialtheory_files/media.s
wf
http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/TVtruth.htm
http://pakistanreview.com/Articles/impact_of_cableTV_onkids.htm
http://searchwarp.com/swa241109.htm
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080106165545AA74myL

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