TV, Once the Heart of Family Life…
I remember hearing, just a few decades ago, all the sociologists and family counselors, the pundits and social commentators, and I and my friends, lamenting the effect TV has had on family and friends and social life. We had all become couch potatos, and families become placid silent zombies lined along the (oversized) couch staring at the “boob tube”, having forgotten the art of talk and sharing the details of our day, of how to work out the matters and issues of lives, … yes, TV had taken the communal and interpersonal life of old and left us … well, like I just said.
But now I just read, in ScienceDaily, a science ezine covering all the latest things I just read there a most remarkable thing:
“In his dissertation work at the Department of Journalism, Media, and Communication, Jakob Bjur studied so-called social viewing.
In the past, watching TV was a social activity that brought people together. The whole family watched the same program on the same TV set, and when people went to work the next day they could be fairly sure that most other people had also seen the same program. This is no longer the case. What once brought us together is now a source of fragmentation.”(my emph)
As Yogi Berra, the sage of the last century once (or often) said, “deja vue all over again”! What’s left? As the other sage of the same last century, Janis Joplin, once (or often) sang “freedoms just having nothing left to lose”! Are we THAT close to freedom, now?
