Assignment 5- Madison Underwood- TV vs. Cellphone: A Fight that the Underdog Will Never Win

Growing up, my parents would always joke that my eyes were always glued to the TV. I always watched Disney Channel over the summer, Food Network with my grandpa after getting home from school, and Dateline with my dad on Saturday nights. To this day I still love to watch Food Network and crime shows like Criminal Minds but I find myself recording them on the DVR and letting them pile up, unnoticed like the dust-covered books on an old shelf. I sometimes pride myself of the fact that I do not spend hours upon hours watching reruns of old Disney shows, however this pride comes to shame as I look at my average screen time on my cell phone. The reason I do not watch TV that much is because this past week I spent on average of three hours a day on my phone- three hours that I could have been studying material, reading, or preparing for college. TVs are a great source of entertainment but they can't compare with the convenience of cellphones which provide an interactive connection between device and user unparalleled by the television. Moreover, more and more advertisers are focusing their attentions on internet ads when looking to target the general population. The mass media has the capabilities to be used in a productive manner- documentaries and news articles/broadcastings- creating a more educationally diverse society. Yet it is laziness that prevails in the majority of the American population- a laziness that leads to more people knowing who won this most recent season of American Idol rather than who the most recent Nobel Prize recipient is.