ESSAY TOPIC 8: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Television has destroyed communication among friends and family. Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.

It’s hard to decide whether television has destroyed communication among friends and family or not. But in my opinion saying that “television has destroyed communication” is such an exaggeration. Well, actually it did change the communication a lot, but hasn’t destroyed yet. I’ve noticed that the more time we spend watching television the less time we have to communicate with people around us. But it depends on a viewer. I think the influence of television on people has both bad sides and good ones.

Firstly, when we watch TV we forget about the time, we don’t notice how time passes and we have less time to communicate with people. Then, if you’re an active viewer you watch television every day, so this literally kills your communication. You start to overweight television communication over the real ones and by time you can even forget how to talk with people in reality. Couple of years ago I was such an active viewer. I had my favorite shows, I still remember the most favorite one of mine, it was called “Drake and Josh” about two brothers being in awkward and funny situations. I remember how I was forgetting about totally everything when that show was on. I even started to come early from school so that I wouldn’t miss any second of it. While my friends were hanging out, doing interesting things together, communicating with each other, I was at home, being a coach potato and watching my favorite television show. Fortunately or unfortunately that movie series are over now.

Then, if we look closely, television actually can have a strong impact on our communication in a good way. If we watch the right, interesting, meaningful programs our communicating skills will defiantly rise. We can learn new things, new words and other various skills that improve our communication. As my favorite television show was over, I should have found another one, so that if I got bored of communicating with my friends and family I could watch it. There is this channel called “English Club”. I spend about 3 hours of my day watching it. But I can totally see the difference between this programs and the ones that I used to watch 2 years ago. While watching “Drake and Josh” I was wasting my time and making my brain even dumber, watching “English Club” I learn various helpful things. And to be honest I’ve realized that my English skills and communication has been improved by watching it frequently.

To sum up, I don’t actually agree with the statement that says that television has “destroyed” the communication, because in reality it didn’t. Moreover, it makes the communication even better in some cases. I think it depends on a person and on the programs that one watches. If you watch a meaningless program, something that would never improve yourself then of course it's going to have a bad influence on you and on your communication, but by watching something smart and interesting and learning new various things will make your communication even better and smarter.

(written by Mariam Mirzoyan)