TELEVISION IS DOING MORE HARM THAN GOOD TO OUR YOUTHS
Mr. Chairman, panel of judges, time-keeper. co-debators. Ladies and Gentlemen I am here to support the motion which states that "Television is doing more harm than good to our youths Television is one important aspect of mass media. It is a means by which information can be disseminated to the public while, at the same time, entertaining them. Television itself is a means of broadcasting still and moving pictures, and sound over a distance by means of electrical waves moving through the air.
Television has done a lot of harm to our youths A lot of wrong information is passed through it to our youths. The way we use television in this part of the world is nothing to write home about. Pornographic pictures in form of blue films and obscene plays are shown on our television thereby sending wrong signals to the young people. Under this circum-stance, our youths are worse off; they are badly affected They have wrong and perverted views about life and in most cases makes them not to think straight. Their mode of dressing is also harmpered. just as their thinking faculties. Nudity is the order of the day in our society Girls and young ladies who should have constituted a bunch of virtuous group of future women in our society are being led wrongly into prostitution Through television a lot of obscenity is being passed to our youths, and before we know it, a lot of damage has been done. The reason why we have many girls going into prostitution is not only traceable to the pervading poverty in our society but also to misguided information being sent through television.
Mr. Chairman Sir. panel of judges I know that you agree with me that we have lost our African values, culture and tradition as a result of the Western values and culture we have erroneously imbibed through television Our values are now skewed and twisted Western values have been imposed on us through the television and we are now in a di-lemma. Youths no longer have respect for elders, community leaders and parents When our youths have more faith in the western culture and values than our own indigenous values, how would they respect their leaders and parents?
The increasing wave of crime and violence in our society is as a result of violent western films imported into our country through television Violence and gangsterism abound in western films and this is what our youths embrace. We are complaining of armed robbery and violence, why would we not reap violence and gangsterism when we allow our youths to keep on imbibing violence through television? The youths learn how to handle sophisticated guns from most of these western films and the worst aspect of it is that our indigenous films mimic these western films by patterning their own films after the western ones. This makes them to lose their originality.
The most irritating aspect of the harm television does to our youth is that it makes studying burdensome for them. Our youths who are mainly students have abandoned their studies for television. Majority of them waste their valuable time, which should have been used for studying, watching television. Youths prefer to stay glued to their television, commit time of programmes into memory and keep time with programmes on television to the detriment of their studies. This is a dangerous trend that we have to reverse if we are not going to jeopardise the future of our youths.
Mr Chairman Panel of judges and Ladies and Gentlemen, I hope with these few points of. I have been able to convince you that television has done more harm than good to our youths. Thank you.