Reality Shows And Its Effects On The World 's View Of Society

"Fist-pumping beachgoers. Singers competing for millions. Survivors outwitting, outlasting and outplaying. Turn on the television and chances are you’ll see all of these things. Whether you’re watching MTV, OWN or a main broadcast network, nearly every channel is home to reality television," USA Today reports. In the early 2000's, Reality TV began to come into play. It has become one of the most popular genres on television today. Although, for more than a decade, Reality TV has increased in popularity among Americans, the relative effects it has on

In order to fit in to society, some people may modify their own actions based on the perceived reality of the TV show. It is easy to reality TV programs and the way they are perceived, could affect society as a whole.

Also, in many cases, the characters used in these shows are not ordinary individuals, but highly paid actors that simply recite scripts. Clearly, these shows are inaccurately labeled as “reality television,” and many individual’s time is wasted as a result. Time for many is very valuable. Wasting a person’s time because of an inaccurate description could be just as detrimental as wasting a person’s money because of an inaccurate description. Many people watch these shows to view real life situations, but what they are really viewing is the complete opposite. This cultivates confusion about what is real and what is fake.

A person’s mind is filled from ear to ear, with worries, concerns, and meaningless thoughts, that it is easy to lose track of the importants aspects of life, Such as knowing your values, and remaining true to yourself. Furthermore, when they see someone who has “it better” than them in the real world, they easily are able to get engaged with the the program being presented, even if it is not all fairytales all the time. Watching these programs allows the individual to relax, and establish hope, for the majority. Rarely, it stresses others out due to the fact that they don't have the same lifestyle. Altogether, the viewer will still present similarities between their lifestyle and the reality shows, for better or for worse.

This research will focus on the negative impact of reality TV and analyse facts and examples of influence from reality TV shows. The information provided and studies are referred from year 2000 till present hence it will be based on most recent popular reality TV shows.

As a kind of television programming which has lower production fee and a larger range of audiences,reality television has become a major force of television entertainment.It changes the way audiences watch television by providing imaginary space for them,allowing them fantasize themselves as the part of the show(Hicks,2009).However,while the reality television is argued as ‘highly edited reality’,the positive effects are doubted by some observers.The reality television in this essay can be defined as a genre of television programming with unscripted real-life situations,usually features ordinary masses as the protagonist rather than famous stars,which usually consists of four types:Watching people live or work,Self-improvement,Competition and Competition in a special living situation.(Australian Government Australian Communications and Media Authority,2007)This essay will argue that ‘reality television’ has a negative impact on society by focusing on its effects to girls,teenagers and children.

Reality TV promotes dangerous stereotypes by presenting groups of people in a negative way, having offensive material that uneducated individuals can misinterpret. One way we can make stereotypes dangerous is by avoiding certain groups of people due to our perception of them,

Shows like Keeping Up With the Kardashians, The Bachelor and The Real Housewives have been taking the country by storm with the unscripted, outrageously unpredictable stories of ordinary people from around the country. Americans spend thirty three percent of their free time watching television and sixty seven percent of the shows are reality television (Reality Television:a Shocking Statistic). The average American watches five hours of television a day, that means they spend three and a half hours a day watching reality television. This shows that reality television is affecting everyone's everyday lives. Reality television is harmful to our society because it promotes stereotypes, it leaves a lasting impression on young susceptible minds,

As people, we have the common belief that caring is important. In our society, it is highly influenced to be positive, loving, and acceptancing. With those standards of trying to be better people, why is it that we watch reality TV for the pure enjoyment of humiliation? Reality shows such as The Bachelor/ette, Catfish, Wife Swap, and many others tend to have the same goal, which is humiliation (Interview). Why do shows like these attract people?

After reading article one, Why Reality TV Doesn’t suck, and May Even Make Us Smarter, I can say I fully agree with this article. The writer of this article is Grant McCracken, an anthropologist who has studied American culture and business for over two decades. “Reality TV is often perceived as a “vast wasteland.” People say it’s uncouth, desperate, and lawless.” (McCracken 1). The start of Reality TV started when regular television just became plain boring, writers wanted to make a story for viewers to watch that was unpredictable. Reality TV can be manipulated by producers and still no one quite knows where things will end up. This makes Reality shows interesting and sometimes even maybe uncomfortable for some viewers. Grant McCracken says, once people believe what is true about themselves we can begin to figure out what’s really going on in this culture. In this case, the surface says, “Reality TV is a dumbing down.” But the secret says “not always.” Sometimes, Reality TV contributes to smartening up (2). I can relate to this statement because whenever I watch Reality TV shows like, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, I see how

For close to a decade, the ethics behind the existence of reality TV have been questioned. While there are ardent viewers of reality TV, researchers and other scholars disapprove them, and claim that the world would have been in a better place. Reality TV shows, especially in America, are extremely profitable to media owners, and this has increased their popularity in the recent years. The main target audience for these shows are teenagers and women, who spend a lot of time discussing about them, even hours after the shows. Most of the reality shows in America and other parts of the world have common ideas. The most fundamental aspect of most reality TV shows is that they display people who go through embarrassing, painful and humiliating ordeals. This is what the reality shows expect their audiences to be entertained, and presumably laugh at the situations the people go through. For this reason and many more, it has been found that they are more detrimental than entertaining to the society, and therefore, the world would be in a better place without them (Pozner 89-91).

To quote Matt Philbin, managing editor of the MRC Culture & Media Institute, “the problem with much of reality TV is that it isn’t about real people or reality at all. These are highly scripted, performed shows, ‘written’ like a piece of fiction and as such they need the classic conflict-driven characters and soap opera melodrama.”

1. Most girls will do whatever it takes to be skinny and look like the stars that weigh 100 pounds "...the media influence on the cultural phenomenon of dieting and the perfect body. “Commercials and reality TV shows make you feel bad about yourself so you buy into the fad," Cohn said. The diet industry earns $50 billion each year on diet pills, and $8.4 billion is spent every year on cosmetic surgery. Women -- and men, Cohn stressed -- want to be thin, because large men and women are ridiculed" (Demmel). Eating disorders continues to be problem among young girls because of their role models. Girls on reality TV shows have that 'perfect' body and girls what to be everything like them.

The cultural phenomenon ‘Reality Television (TV)’ has become an increasingly popular genre of television since its paroxysm onto the airwaves in 1945. The term ‘Reality Television’ can be defined as the genre of entertainment that documents the lives of ‘ordinary’ individuals through the exhibition of allegedly unscripted real-life scenarios, despite inquisitive inquiries disclosing Reality TV to entail facets of script. The primary objective of Reality TV is purely to entertain the audience. This genre of television is appealing to viewers due to its entertainment principle/value, the audience’s competency to correlate to the characters and their situations, and the contingency it presents for escapism and voyeurism. We can capitalise the Australian appropriation of the American popular dating Reality TV show ‘The Bachelor’ as a tool to further comprehend the purpose and appeal of Reality television. The postulations of media’s obligations to society in contrast to their current actions and media as a mirror to society - the normative theory, can also be utilised as an implement to apprehend Reality TV. Through the strict analysis of ‘ The Bachelor’ and the employment of the normative theory, the purpose and appealing factor of Reality TV can be deeply examined.

There has been a huge increase in “reality” based television over the last few years. From Survivor to Big Brother it seems that we are constantly being bombarded with a new type of reality television program. But why do people watch these shows? What makes these shows so interesting? One theory brought up in an article in Psychology Today by Steven Reiss Ph.D. and James Wiltz, a Ph.D. candidate at Ohio State University, is that, “reality television allows Americans to fantasize about gaining status through automatic fame” (Reiss and Wiltz, 2001). This is the American dream, acquiring fame with little to no work at all. And what better way to do it than on television?