March blog assignment week 1 post 1

March blog assignment week 1 post 1

Central argument: TV is helping rural women in India to gain a greater authority over their own lives therefore it must be good for you.

Joel Waldfogel is right about a number of things in his article TV is good for you. In the article he uses a study by Robert Jenson of Brown University and Emily Oster of the University of Chicago, to back up his facts, facts about the actual changes that the women had in the perspective of their own lives after the arrival of televisions. I however believe that TVs will only be good for you depending on the circumstance and what it is exactly that is being broadcasted. There is a major difference in the channels being provided to these rural women and the rest of the world. The network that these villages get has about 2 or 3 channels as they have cable network, the majority of the modern world on the other hand has hundreds of channels to choose from.

The channels that are available on cable TV (the connection available in villages in rural India) usually include a news channel and one other. In the study conducted in rural India the women watched a show which showcased the control women had on their own lives in the modern world. This was a major factor in the study as the study was being conducted to see how rural women’s perspective changes about control over their lives by watching modern women.

On the other hand when people in the developed world watch TV they usually spend the majority of their time switching from one channel to the other. In that also most of these people would not be watching something intellectually stimulating, as they would be flipping through sports channels and TV shows such as ‘The Simpsons.’ Unlike the women of rural India these people also do not just sit in front of the television for say about a half hour a day or something but instead spend upwards of 3 to 4 hours a day in front of these black boxes. This not only turns their brain to jelly but also has a negative impact on their health as they stay inactive for prolonged periods of time. Along with all these watching TV also has some impact on your finances as when you are exposed to the millions of adverts that air on televisions every day you feel drawn towards a particular product, sometimes even if you have no real need for it in the first place. For example you don’t really need to eat at a fast food chain however by seeing adverts from the likes of McDonalds and KFC many feel compelled in a sense to try these places out, which again have negative impacts on you health.

So is TV good for you? As you can see for your self there are both negative and positive sides to television, it all depends on how you use it. I however would say that for most of the world TV has a more negative impact than a positive one as it also decreases a human beings efficiency along with having an effect on our health and finances.