In “The Plug in Drug: TV and American Family. Part 1” (C. Shrodes et al, pp. 320-323), Marie Winn takes a compelling look at television’s impact on children and the family.

A quarter of a century, television entering into American society and becomes so deeply rooted in American life. It becomes a legal necessity and an ordinary part of people’s daily life. In the early time, a strange shortsightedness troubled those early observers: people regarded television as good influence upon the family. They will use a picture showing a family sitting together before TV set to explain the function of it. They think television has brought the family together in one room. It’s a wonderful phenomenon.

By 1975, the influence of television has changed a lot that early writers could not predict. We can’t image the possible effects of so much TV viewing on child-raising methods. In other words, the power of TV dominates the life of family.

In other aspect, television changes the ritual of family. Before the TV coming, each family has their own rituals and things to do. However, now TV makes them more and more familiar, lose their characteristic.

Look back on children, there are different factors will influence the children’s life, such as home, peer group, school, church and culture generally. But the television plays the most important role. Television makes children difficulty into people because of lacking communication. In this area, the method of rising is regarded as the key factor. TV has often been called “the electronic baby-sitter”; some parents usually use TV to make their children calm down. Children’s consumption of TV increased directly. And they enjoy themselves in the world of TV instead of the real world. Gradually, you will find them too quite isolated from the people.

Today’s family still does special activities together. But it’s not so often. Television has taken over people’s way of living and children’s habits. Their ordinary daily life together is decreased. It’s bad for the development of family and the member’s normal life. So the author in this article stress that overcome the problem caused by television and communicate more among the family and people.