Fourth Essay

“TV Addiction”

Quite a few people jokingly say that they have a friend or family

relative who is addicted to television. What they may not realize is it may in fact be true. In

Marie Winn’s essay “ TV Addiction “ , she first defines what she believes an addict to be,

then she compares an addict to someone who watches Television all day. Winn writes her

essay in a very simplistic manner, and focuses on the destructiveness of an addiction. Then

she compares it to the destructiveness of television.

First she discusses how the term addiction is commonly used out of

context. You will always hear people state that they’re addicted to Pepsi or mystery novels,

but are they really addicted? What these people actually mean to say is that they enjoy

reading mystery novels more than most other forms of passing time. The same is true for

Pepsi. They are not actually addicted to it, they just enjoy it more than most other

beverages. Marie Winn then poses a question.

Do you think television falls into the fake addiction category (the

addiction that is used out of context), or is it a real addiction? She does it in this way so

that when she states her argument you have already begun to think of an answer and

your mind is accepting or rejecting her statements. Since all of her statements support and

collaborate each other, it is very easy to be pulled into her train of thought.

Marie Winn then goes on to say that television addict, who know

they are addicts, tell themselves to do other things. They plan to do this or that, but instead

of doing something, they sit in front of the television. To these kind of people watching

television is an escape from reality. When you are watching a television show, you are not

worrying about the bills or the fact that you have to go shopping, you are only wondering if

the main character saves the girl and wins the day. The same is true for book readers. They

read to immerse themselves into another world and escape reality.

If one were to say television is an addiction you would not be wrong. If this is true

however, then anything can be considered addictive. Work, school, computers, books, models,

toy trains, baseball cards... are all things that can be considered addictive. For cases like these it

really should not be thought of as addictive. An adult human should show enough responsibility

to know what he/she likes and also to know when it is interfering with normal life. These people

should be made to understand that fiction is just that, fiction. It is not real and has no bearing on

real life.

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Word Count: 463