Written by James Fohl

If you take a minute or two, and sit down to think about it, pretty much every body living in the United States enjoys watching television. I mean, whether just for a few minutes a day, or for several hours a week, television is an important part of a lot of peoples' lives.

Going a bit deeper into the subject, everybody has their own favorite spot for watching their favorite television programs. Whether people like watching television in their living room, or their bedroom, they always have that specific area in which they sit.

Take for instance the living room, people enjoying television will be sitting on their favorite couch, relaxing in their own personal recliner, or just sprawled across the floor, glaring at the glow of the television.

In the bedroom, the obvious choice is laying on the bed, and drifting off to bed while watching the eleven o'clock news. In other rooms, such as dens, giant bean bag chairs often find themselves filling the niche of the perfect television watching companion.

Television had an impact on American culture back in the 1950's, and to this day still continues to influence our every day lives. Instead of reading a novel, people often go to their local video store and pick up the movie version of the same novel, and go home and watch it on their television set. Instead of eating dinner in the dining room, families huddle around the television set eating their food and watching their favorite television series.

If you think about it, television has really changed every aspect of our lives. From what we do in our spare time, to how we get the news and weather, television has ultimately become embedded into our every day life style. And if you think about it, ever since television became part of main stream American culture in the fifties, it has been under debate.

Sure, Americans may not get the same amount of exercise as they should be getting, and countless phrases such as couch potato have been invented, but you really have to look at the bright side of television.

Television enables viewers to see the whole world, and not just the viewer's local community. Because of this, people were able to learn about other cultures, and it really made the world a more united place. Not only this, but television is also an educational tool. Sure, you can learn a lot while in school, but with the wide degree of television programming, you can learn anything you want to know on pretty much any topic imaginable.

So from having a comfortable watching location, to learning about other cultures, television has really changed the American culture in the past fifty years. While there will always be people in this world trying to convince everyone that television is a bad idea, there will be a million others saying the exact opposite. It is true that television does have its bad impact on society, but so does every other great invention that changes humanity for the better.