Thought Paper #3

Thought Paper In 50 Essays by Samuel Cohen, there’s an essay called “Never Just Picture,” by Susan Bordo talks about teenagers or adolescents today are influenced too much on the media. The media sends messages to the kids about how they should look and how they have to be to be good looking or cool. This is a bad thing because many girls tend to be like the girls on the television or the magazines and starve themselves which leads to bad medical illnesses. What I think the author is trying to say is that we shouldn’t care what’s on TV and do our own thing. Ii we do our own thing then we won’t have to be so conscious about what we have to wear to be labeled cool or pretty. I believe we are cool with or without the things that they show on the TV those things are luxury not needs we don’t need to look like that we just have to be ourselves. Another essay called “Television The –in-Drug,” Marie Winn talks about how television is not what many people thought it would be when they saw commercials about them. Showing how the families would sit together to watch it but in reality it was just something people would watch on their own. Many people have become addicted to the television because they can just watch it for hours and focus on that and only that. Many little kids watch way too much TV and are influenced by it and want to do everything that is going on in there. What I think the author is trying to say is that we can’t depend on the television so much we have to get out and not let the TV separate our families and our culture. I think we have to just live on without watching so much TV and exercise more. In Chapter 8 of Nowtopia talks about how television and video games there is also something else that people are addicted to and that is the internet. Many people love to be on the internet and like to surf it and see what’s out there. The first uses for the internet was for the U.S. military to communicate with others and for basic research to build weapons. Many people have become really dependent to the internet when it comes down to looking up information. I believe that what the author is saying is that we can be too dependent and we shouldn’t be like that because one day it can be gone and what else they are going to do if there isn’t any more internet anymore. I believe that we can have limited time for our internet and then focus on other things. Works Cited: Susan Bordo. “Never Just Pictures.” 50 Essays. Boston New York. 2007. 85-92 Marie Winn. “Television: The Plug-In Drug.” 50 Essays. Boston. New York. 2007. 457-466. Chris Carlsson. Nowtopia. 2008.