Altered States How Television Changes Childhood By Joshua Meyrowitz

Television, Friend or Foe Television has been around for while and it honestly I can say it is still a fundamental item in most families around the world. Even though television has change over time, I believe that families have learned the advantages and disadvantages of having this type of technology at home. According to the article “Altered States: How Television Changes Childhood” by Joshua Meyrowitz, the author states how the television has affected the relationship between parents and their children. After reading the article I notice how Meyrowitz focus mostly on the negative aspects of the effects of television, which is not at all true. Although I don’t completely disagree with the author opinion I wish he could have bee more specific explaining both sides of the story. When I say both sides of the story I am refereeing of the positive effects television have. Personally I am living prove that television can have a negative but also positive change on children and parents. First of all growing up as the only boy in my family was a very lonely experience not just because I was the only boy but because I was the youngest and all my sisters were at least 6 to 10 years older than me. The only distraction I had was watching television most of the time during my childhood. I know the article “Altered States” basically stated that parents aren’t aware of what their children are watching on television and may affect them negatively since they can be exposed to explicit material. On the other hand my situation was a bit similar to the article but in a way was different. My parents gave the liberty to watch television without any supervision whatsoever, I know it sounds irresponsible but I feel like they trusted me already. There were times I would explore different channels on my television and honestly every time I saw something unusual or had any adult content I would change to cartoons right or just turn it off. Furthermore television had huge role in my childhood because it gave the best memories also I learned many things from building a kite to learning a new language or a new game. Looking back in history families has been changing over the years but that doesn’t mean all the families are the same. However …show more content…
Instead we should learn how to create a strong bound between parents and their children. It sounds simple but it is a lot of work because every family is different, they tend to have different life styles at home. Television will always be exposing adult material, it doesn’t matter how overprotective parents can be, and explicit material will be available somehow. For this reason parents also need to learn to communicate and express their thoughts with full honesty to children. Being honest to children doesn’t mean teaching him/her the darkest secrets of adult material, in contrast it means to guide them to the right path in life making sure they are aware of what they are watching and most important is to show interest to learn more about what he or she likes. With that being said I can attest from my own to experience narrow it down the specific reasons of why I believe Meyrowitz article could have used more details expressing the negative and positive effects television have between parents and