Mark(Anthony)Cushman (Edison): Who’s life are we living? Living in a voyeuristic society.

How many times have you caught yourself watching “The Real World” and thought about the evolution of reality TV? How many times hove you walked past a news stand only to see photos of baby Suri’s new outfit? Our soceity has slowly devolved into a steady diet of other peoples lives. From the old pillars of “Candid Camera” and “Cops” to the more recent “Flavor of Love” quality television has been usurped by all new shows of the same old thing, with a different twist and a new face. Who’s suffering the most from this? Our youth. When little Johnny comes home from school and sees young attractive people on MTV getting drunk and being promiscuous it makes one wonder what kind of affect this can on the phyche of a child. Even if the content is wholesome, we’re teaching our kids valuable lessons in doing nothing productive with their free time. Here are some raw statistics for you. The number of hours of TV watched annually by Americans 250 million, value of that time assuming everyone was making $5/hour: $1.75 trillion. Number of minutes spent per week in meaningful conversation with children: 3.5, number of minutes per week the average child watches television: 1,680. Average number of hours American children spend in school per yer: 900, number of hours spent watching TV: 1500. The only ones we have to blame is ourselves. The viewership for the finale of American Idol last year was 36 million people. US weekly had 2007 sales of 1.9 million and People magazine had 3.6 million. The public appetite has only increased since. Indeed the magazine sales may not seem impressive but when you put it into perspective that many people get their fix for celebrities’ lives on the internet you get a whole new picture all together. Gossip websites Perez Hilton and TMZ get upwards of 632,00 hits per day a piece! It seems that every season there is a slew of new reality shows just waiting to live your life for you. Think about all of the shows that have come and gone in the last 6 years… the bachelor, the bachelorette, the biggest loser, road rules, the amazing race, the apprentice, top chef, the real housewives, hell’s kitchen, the contender, and the list could go on much longer! When will our craving to live vicariously through other people stop? We need to go back to the days when kids would be out playing baseball, or at least spray painting trains as opposed to stiffling their imagination staring at “the babysitter”. My roomate and I have discussed this and as a way to protest the garbage that is filling up our televisions and time we decided against getting cable (now x-box is a different story altogether!). I suggest everyone do the same or at least stop watching the filth that is Reality television. Live your own lives people, CARPE DIEM!

This entry was posted on 23. April 2009 at 23:40 and is filed under Social Problems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.