Television or Books

                                                      Books or TV

Have you ever put down a good book to watch a TV show? Or did you ever stop watching television to read a good book? Well I never did put down a book for a TV show because I think that a book is way better than a TV show. I do have evidence supporting my statement. A TV and book both affect the viewer or reader physically, academically and mentally which I will be explaining in the upcoming paragraphs. But think about this, there are a people who occasionally blink when they are staring at the television barely inches away from the screen. There are also people who barely even look up when they are reading a book for hours and hours until their neck burn from looking down. Both of these types of people are really into what they are doing, but which one is better and more useful?

Physically, the eye gets damaged when you look at the TV for a longtime. When you look at the TV, you're eyes are straining to catch all the fast motion pictures and send the pictures up to your brain. If you strain too much your vision will start getting blurry Since some TV shows are addicting, it is more likely that you will be staring at the screen for a longer time than you really intended. Above 50% of all people who are wearing contact lenses and glasses are people who watched too much of TV. So your eyes will eventually get damaged if you watch television too much .You will also not be getting enough of fresh air and exercise, because, as I said earlier you will be watching more than you intend to which makes it hard to turn it off and go outside. Things are made even harder when you have to turn off the TV when a good program is going on. If there is not any good program in one channel, it is the other. Unlike TV, when you finish a book, you will most likely close it and go out for the rest of the day and start the next book later. Physical activity is necessary for being healthy, TV makes physical activity less among students making them unhealthy, but books prevent this from occurring. Does books and television just affect the reader or viewer just physically or also academically?

Academically, reading books have a lot of influence in your Language Arts grade. The best part in reading books is that it increases your vocabulary without yourself knowing it. When you read a book you are really into, you will mainly focus on the story more than the structure of sentences, and will eventually start using context clues to figure your way out of the story, which makes your vocabulary grow. Even if you consciously ignore the grammar, your mind will subconsciously take note of it, increasing your proficiency in the language. This happens even when you read leisurely books. Reading informative books help you gain more knowledge than seeing the news on the TV. In the TV the people will just summarize the big idea, just giving you a little knowledge of it, but in books, you can expect it to give you information from head to toe if you know where to look. If you don't get a sentence in a book you can always go back and reread it again, but if you are watching a show in the television, you cannot do that unless you recorded it .You can also never get bored reading a good book again and again but you will eventually get tired of seeing the same episode more than three times. After you finish a good book, you will always wonder if you could also write a book like that. With good proficiency and motivation, it will help you write good essays and short stories with ease. When you look at the television watching the ready-made film, you will not be doing anything, but staring at a screen. A book makes you creative because you are the one imagining the story in your head, but does a book or TV just affect you physically, academically?

Sometimes TV and books also affects you mentally and change the way you think. A book with information on a subject will change your idea on the subject when you finish the book; gaining full knowledge of that subject, but this is not the same with the TV. You may say that you can also learn from the television by watching discovery channel or animal planet, but actually it gives you very less information compared to a book or mostly makes you more confused. A book that you read for hours will be crammed into a half hour show with breaks. How much do you think you will learn? Not much and also, these channels approach a subject with a very fast introduction, which makes it very difficult for the viewer to understand leaving them with wrong information about the subject. TV also sometimes provides viewers with unwanted information in some Ads which maybe inappropriate for children. As I have told you TV is addicting and can sometimes leave the viewer excited, which everyone may have experienced, but if that keeps going on without control, the person who is watching may become uncontrollably addicted to it, and will start concentrating on it more than his or her surrounding. This leads the child getting diverted from his/her academic field to the TV, and the child will only concentrate on that TV show. Because of this TV, the child's test scores will go down, start ignoring homework and the presence of mind of his/her surroundings will go down. If the addiction still goes on, it will make them more miserable by the reasons I stated above. A book does not leave the child like this.

As you see a book is way better than TV and it does not have any negative side affects. Addiction to TV is bad and gives you problems but addiction to books is good because it helps with your academics. Just because books helps you in academics doesn't make it boring, because there are many good books out there if you know what to choose. So books are better than television.