Summary & Response - Winnie Ngo

Winnie Ngo

English 110

4 March

Television: Apparently the Cause of Family Problems

Marie Winn, an author and a translator of Czech writers, in her excerpt, “Television: The Plug-In Drug,” claims that television has had negative effects on families in America. Marie Winn describes how the families’ schedules become regimented, the families no longer spend unique quality times together, and children’s needs are not met while parents enjoy the undemanding lifestyle. She supports her claims by describing these current family situations and adding other people’s personal experiences or thoughts. As families’ tight schedules are set, life has become mechanized and less enjoyable. Not only does television reduce the quality time family members spend bonding with each other, but the case of allowing the television to entertain also causes the parents to neglect the children’s needs for growth and development.  Her purpose is to bring to her readers’ attention the damaging effects of television on the development and maintenance of the relationships that hold families together to raise awareness of what she considers a damaging and rapidly growing issue. Because of the author’s nostalgic and informative tone, her writing appears to target people who are concerned about unhealthy family relationships.

When I first read Marie Winn’s “Television: The Plug-in Drug” I was expecting it to be about the addiction of television, but it turned out to be about the impact of television on family relationships. While reading Winn’s work, I understand where she is coming from but I could not fully agree with her argument. I felt that her supporting details to her claims weren’t very effective because it revolved around a single idea that television stops families from communicating with each other. I believe that there are many other stronger factors that prevent communication such as the parents’ lack a time due to work. As a result, I didn’t feel convinced that television is a strong cause of the weakening bond between family members. After listening to other people’s thoughts in class, it was clear that I wasn’t the only one who felt that Winn did not provide strong enough supporting details to prove her point.

I felt that many of her statements were quite repetitive and she kept suggesting that the lack of those quality times families had from previous times is the center of the problem.  She mostly illustrated how television has created the lack of interactive experiences between the family members; families no longer enjoy specific kinds of jokes, songs, games and other activities together that make each family unique. I understand that television has certainly changed the way time is spent among family members, but I believe that television do provide that common enjoyment that brings them together. From my personal experience, right after watching television, my family would spend time talking about what we had just watched or topics related to it. Even if televisions didn’t serve a healthy purpose for family bonding it does not mean that it is the main problem for communication and bonding.  Parents and children living in today’s society do lack the time to spend with each other for multiple reasons. One of them could be the struggle to keep up societies growing standards; everyone is expected to obtain a college degree, get a good career, and maintain a stable social status.

Without the use of statistics or significant studies it's hard to say that television is the root of the problems she states. The quotes from each individual she provided were nice to have, but they weren’t all that reliable or powerful enough to strengthen her argument because not everyone has the same experience. She even states at the end that television isn’t aren’t the only factor for the decline in family life, which makes it even more difficult for me to agree with her claims.

Although I don’t completely agree with Marie Winn’s argument there were some ideas that did catch my attention. I found the part where she mentions the study that demonstrated the importance of eye-to-eye contact for relationships because I personally feel that I have a problems looking straight into other people eyes once in a while and I didn’t know the reason for it.

Marie Winn’s argument is understandable because she had grown up in a very different society, but it difficult to apply her ideal family life to the current day social structure.