Analysis Of The Worst Years Of Our Lives By Barbara Ehrenreich

Growing up we always hear people around us or in movies talk about a “mid-life crises,” and we’ve never really understood what they talk about because we hadn’t experienced it ourselves. In Gail Sheehy’s essay “Predictable Crises of Adulthood,” she writes about each a crisis that can occur in each stage of a human’s life. She break’s our lives into six stages. “Pulling Up Roots”, “Trying Twenties”, “Catch-30,” “Rooting and Extending”, “The Deadline Decade”, and “Renewal or Resignation”. I can’t relate to all but one of these topics because I have not lived them. The only stage I can relate to is Pulling Up Roots, because I just turned 18 and still learning about life. From my experience, Sheehy’s crises claim in the Pulling Up Roots stage is accurate for me.

“Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.” (Peter). There was a time when all children wanted to do was to run, play, explore, and be adventurous. As time evolved, children have found more interest in television. Statistics show that a child spends 900 hours per year in school,and they spend 1,200 hours per year watching television. When asked to choose between watching T.V. and spending time with their families fifty-four percent of four to six year olds voted they would prefer to watch television. Television has changed the mindset of children over the years it has been proven that the more programs they watch, the more harmful it is to their brain development. T.V.

Sachs explains that TV viewing brings little pleasure and close to being an addiction with little benefit and almost no happiness. This appeals to the readers emotionally since most can identify with some sort of addiction and its fallout. Most Americans have some sort of addiction, whether it is food or television and relate when the author uses this analogy to compare. Sachs goes on to claim that this addiction is leading to the decline in our social development since we spend less time face to face and more time in front of a TV or other media devices. Time that was once spent with family is now in front of a television screen or other media devices. This hold true as much now as it did in 2011 when this essay was written. Just this one statement can draw a reader further in since now almost all of us have a device that fits in our pockets that takes our attention away from other people. We end up looking down at our phones or tablets more than we look at other peoples faces. This, unfortunately, is becoming a sad truth in our society today. We would rather look into a world that is hard to distinguish what is real and what is made up instead of enjoying the real world. Sachs does state that there are other factors contributing to the decline of our social state in America

In “watching T.V Shortens Life Span, Study Finds” Jeannine Stein reveals the fact that how watching T.V every day is shortening our life span. Australian Heart Association conducted a study on 8800 men and women and they found that eighty five percent of them, who were watching T.V for one hour every day, were patient of obesity and diabetes. Jeannine says that watching T.V for one hour every day will raise the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease by 18%. Jeannine believes that we need to spend our time in some physical activities rather than sitting in front of T.V.

It has become so common in our life that there is at least one television in every home. They have become an inevitable part of our lives. We have to admit that we live in a consumption society where we are always surrounded by technological devices. For instance, while we are sitting at home, we watch television shows, series and TV commercials in general. While watching it, we spend less energy than we spend while sleeping. We do not use our imagination because it is all ready and complete in it. The television affects us with its so-called beauty and supervising our lives by telling us what we should do and not do. Almost all of the things shown on TV are enforcing people to want, to consume or act according to the ideas on it without questioning. On the other hand, it blocks the communication between people because it is so absorbing that we cannot even turn our eyes from it. Hence, we start to behave and think only for ourselves. It drags the society to be an individualistic one where everyone seeks for his own pleasure and be selfish all the time. We are being pushed to create unnecessary needs and wants. Some may think that we can shut television down any time we want and stop its effect on us. However, as it is some kind of addiction, certainly people will not be able to get rid of them right away. Some see it as their “family” which may sound creepy but even if one will

In Sach’s essay “A Nation of Vidiots,” he explains how he believes that the use of television that we intake can contribute to making our people become unhealthy and dumb. In his essays he explains how two thirds of the people in America are obese, one for their bad eating habits and the other reason for watching an unhealthy amount of TV. Sach’s then says that TV is making us dumb mentally by all the TV programs and advertisement that is shown to us. For example, TV ownerships and Politian’s use commercials with catchy tunes to grab viewers’ attention. And with that catchy took and advertisement, the viewer will be anything, which leads them to become less aware of reality and facts. Although Sach’s makes valid points in his essay, I don’t fully agree with him. I do agree with Sach’s when he implies that the use of Television can make us unproductive and fat but I don’t agree that

In “Life According to T.V.” written by Harry Waters and published in Newsweek in 1991, Waters examines the effect that television has on everyday lives. He says that TV has given Americans an unrealistic view of how life works. From jobs to minorities to how women are portrayed to crime rates nearly all aspects of TV are unrealistic or exaggerated. George Gerbner was used to back up Water’s theory on how television impacts people. Water states that heavy viewers of TV are more unrealistic in their view of the world than light viewers because they are exposed to more of the unrealistic ideas portrayed in TV shows than light viewers. The jobs on TV are often expressed as high ranking jobs like lawyers, doctors and athletes rather than blue collar or service jobs such as small businessman or teacher. According Waters the elderly are depicted as being sick and weak when they are actually the opposite. Women are also portrayed as mothers and lovers more often than successful working women.

     But, for most part, author feel television is 'drug'; that is corrupting today's society. Many of us fail to recognize how it has caused the decline of family rituals, the avoidance of relationships and the destruction of the family. Our addiction to this daily habit cause us to escape the real world.

The world is not a replica of what is portrayed on television, and it was never proclaimed to be, however, Barbara Ehrenreich advocates “The worst years of our lives” which reflects the 1980’s in which is believed couch potatoes did not exist, yet. Ehrenreich implies the idea that modern people aren’t “real people” anymore, as they would be in the 1980’s era because they actually performed the activities presented on television. To a certain extent, I concede with Ehrenreich’s theory, because Americans have become inactive, the youth generations are being brainwashed, and we portray ourselves to the virtual world.

In the book, The Worst Years of Our Lives, Barbara Ehrenreich describes the current American response to the modern television. She believes that television had changed overtime as over a decade ago, a majority of things shown on television were things people could do themselves. Today, however, television is full of violence, close-range shooting, racing, etc. This worries her because today's people are unable to do what they see on television and eventually become "couch potatoes" when they watch for hours at a time. Her belief is that there's no reason for a person to continue watching television due to the boredom and jealousy it causes.

While modern day television programs contain enjoyable or unrealistic material that makes the viewer seem like he/she is actually doing it in real life without having to lift a finger, they have transformed most modern day Americans into lazy technology absorbed individuals. In "The Worst Years Of Our Lives", Barbara Ehrenreich makes it evident that our modern day televisions do not correctly portray the negative transformation of the American people through her use of comparisons, descriptive details, and figurative language. Ehrenreich notes that these fantasy-driven activities (chasing fast cars, drinking lite beer, shooting each other at close range, etc.) give the illusion that the viewers are actually performing these tasks in real life without having to actually give

In the passage, The Worst Years of Our Lives, Barbara Ehrenreich makes a broad assertion that television is turning Americans into couch potatoes. There are lazy people, but it is due to their lifestyle, not because they watch TV. Ehrenreich gives the TV too much credit and power for the couch potato phenomenon. Clearly, the blame for this must fall on the individual sitting on the couch. Personal responsibility, work ethic, and self-motivation are the problems, not TV.

In both Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, written in 1985, and Andrew Perlot’s article “The Negative Effects of Television” from the blog Raw Food Health, share the views on the negative impacts of television on society. While Perlot believes people should get rid of television completely, Postman warns his audience to take caution as television makes its way into our daily lives. Due to their different text types, they do not share a common audience. Perlot is writing to young adults with an adequate source of income and are already interested in taking self-care. Postman is writing to educated people and those are well versed in the works of Huxley and Orwell.

In Growing Up With Television: Cultivation Process, Morgan, Shanahan and Signorielli assert that “long-term exposure to television tends to cultivate the image of a relatively mean and dangerous world (Morgan et al., 2009).” Rooted in the amount of time spent consuming content, the mean world syndrome is central to Gerber’s Cultivation Theory, or Effect. The theory states that they are viewing habits range from light to medium to heavy. Although subjective, the amount of time spent consuming content is a key component of cultivation effect. Morgan et al., noted that “the relative difference in viewing levels are more important than the specific amount of viewing (Morgan et al, 2009).”

Over the last forty to fifty years, television has been a major topic of discussion. Specifically, many debate societal benefits to television watching. One widely accepted opinion is that watching TV makes people dumber. People have referred to it with terms like the “idiot box” and do not feel that watching TV has any benefit at all. They feel that it is a waste of time and people need to spend their hours more wisely. Others are of the opinion that TV is actually has societal benefits. From this perspective, they claim that the development of the structure of the programs now requires one to intellectually participate in watching television. Essentially, the argument is whether TV is a beneficial societal force or is it simply a