Reality Television Has A Negative Impact On Society

The evolution of television content is currently steadily moving towards reality television shows. The shift from interest in fiction drama series to reality shows has turned the regular television viewers into addicted voyeurs. There have been diverse views on the effect of reality television shows ranging from support to criticism. George Will, in his article “Reality television: oxymoron” believes that reality television is making ordinary people degenerate morally and act stupid in the effort to please a disinterested audience. Reality TV shows are relying heavily on building extraordinary characters or events out of the norm and attract the attention of the audience. Kellner argues that the audience is enticed by “media constructs

Audience: The target of this piece is mainly millennials and those interested in Reality TV, however this piece reaches a wide range of viewers from young to old because of the vast audience that reality TV encompasses. Some chapters would be very interesting to people who have experienced and viewed closely the several reality TV generations periods that Kavka outlines in her introduction. The author reaches many audiences through the analysis of reality TV over an extensive timeline. Her intended audience wants to analyze the true definition of reality TV and its many intricacies.

Reality Television is a relatively new phenomenon that has exploded over the last several years. Whether it has to do with an “extreme makeover” or finding the supposed love of your life, reality television has given us the opportunity to become voyeurs in others’ lives. Approximately, 50% of television audiences are watching reality shows (Webster University). Long gone are the days of whole television programs. Today, most reality shows depict women as an object, only defined and valued by their sexuality. What kind of message is this sending to young girls? The purpose of this study is to show that reality television can have a negative effect on teenage girls. This matters because it can lead to the sexualization of young girls.

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.

The negative effects of television are huge. To minimize the potential negative effects of television, it's important to understand what the impact of television can be on children.

Some of the most popular television shows in today’s society are The Biggest Looser, Jersey Shore, and Big Brother. These programs and many others are classified as reality television. Reality television’s main purpose is to attempt to portray ordinary people in unscripted situations. Recently, however, many of these shows have achieved in creating the complete opposite, and have earned an immense amount of criticism as a result. Reality television programs are detrimental to society because they influence bad behavior among teenagers, do not produce authentic real life situations, and they humiliate many of the characters.

In the media, reality TV stars like Snooki and Kim Kardashian are on the rise. Most channels on television have at least one reality show, from following housewives to remodeling homes of real life families. However, there are some reality programs that display bad examples, especially for young audiences that are keeping up with each episode. On MTV people see girls being drunk in public, addicts doing drugs, and young girls raising babies at young ages; these are situations seen on reality TV shows. Jeremy W. Peters’ “When Reality TV Gets Too Real” and James Poniewozik’s “Why Reality TV is Good for us” inform readers about what the general public can view on television and how it affects the minds of children. Reality TV shows such as

Today while watching a movie or television show on cable, there were four to five minute breaks of commercials. Most of these commercials consisted of new reality shows. If they were not new, then it was the dates for when they old shows would make a comeback and start another season. Reality television has been in our lives since the 1940s. Although, the shows that were on years ago were much less vulgar than they seem to be now. It appears reality television continues to go down the wrong road. It is seen in many popular reality shows where the characters are almost getting praised for the bad behavior that they show on camera. This is important to know because it is has become a very popular thing for many people to watch, especially young teens. This gives the people in the shows the opportunity to be a role model for teens who might be looking elsewhere other than parents or peers for someone to look up to. It has also been shown that more teens would be interested in signing up to be on a reality show for the chance to gain fame by just about living their life. Reality television has done more harm than good to our society. For the most part, the shows today are showing more things that effects our teens in a more negative way. This left me with the question on does reality television really affect us? There are positives and negative effects on its viewers as well as the effect is has had on the culture of today’s society.

According to Lori Gottlieb, cultural critic and family therapist tells us that “Teens are naturally curious about other people’s lives and want to know how their own lives compare,” I agree with this statement from personal experience. When I was a pre-teen my thoughts always circled around “ when will this end, I tired of it, and do other girls have to go through what I go through on a day to day basis” and resulting in curiousity of others lives and if they were going through the same thing I was at the time. There are also some points where reality can help girls for example inside the article “What Reality TV Teaches Teen Girls” by Meredith Melnick states that “ 65% say such shows introduce new ideas and perspectives, 62% say the shows have raised their awareness of social issues and causes” honestly I agree with this cause it could help adults understand anothers situation, but it can also help the young children by putting themselves in anothers situation and change their perception on veiwing life . I have done this many times and each time it was for the better. I also grew up in a situation where my mothers family were very close minded while my dads family were very open minded and no matter the situation they will listen to both sides of a story and tries to understand and analyze their

Reality TV burst onto the television scene in the early 2000s’s. Shows such as, The Bachelor, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and American Idol are just a few of the hundreds of reality TV shows that are capturing the hearts of Americans on a weekly basis. The effects go unnoticed by the viewers, but as these shows are watched, they begin to take over the personality of the audience and are changing the way people perceive the world today.

What once started as every day, regular people appearing on television shows have now morphed into celebrities and want to be celebrities competing for attention and doing almost anything to receive it on primetime television. The genre of television, which was once jumpstarted by the appeal of relatable people, who could be the viewers’ next door neighbors, being featured has since disappeared and been replaced by a monstrosity that does not accurately portray reality and often stereotypes people (Huff). One specific group that has been targeted by what reality television has morphed into is women. The new version of reality television is specifically adequate at encouraging gender culture, the set of behaviors or practices associated with masculinity and femininity (Huff). Reality television enforces gender roles and negatively impacts feminism in today’s society. Reality television sexualizes women, portrays them as dependent on and less superior to men, and exemplifies them as dramatic, catty, and often only as homemakers. The portrayal and stereotyping of women on reality television is demoralizing and can be described as “the contemporary backlash against feminism” (“Reality TV”). These false and demeaning stereotypes are prevailed in all types of reality television shows, making their impact extensive, considering Americans spend one-third of their spare time watching television and of that time sixty-seven percent is spent watching reality television (“Reality

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.

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).

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.