Living in a Reality World

Reality TV is taking over the TV industry. Everywhere you turn people and celebrities are getting their own reality show. Programs such as the Bad Girls Club, The Hills, Keeping up With The Kardashians, Jersey Shore and many others maintain ongoing stereotypes about gender, culture and race and glamorize the life that they live. Young children watch these shows and look up to these people as role models.

Keeping up with the Kardashians has been on the air since October of 2007. On the season finale when Kourtney gave birth to her baby boy, it drew in 4.8 million viewers, the biggest in E history. Shouldn't more people be tuning into important world and local issues going on instead of watching Kourtney Kardashian giving birth?

These reality stars show the latest trends and are becoming reality icons. Imitation of these reality stars becomes a major issue, because when they are constantly in the media more and more people want to see more of them and become like them. Take Kim Kardashian for example, it seems as if being in front of the media is her only business venture. Without her reality fame, I don't think anyone would know who she was.

With a mass amount of reality TV, how does this affect young children? According to recent television statistics children spend on average 28 hours per week watching TV. Adolescence is a crucial time in a child's life where he takes in a great amount of knowledge and learns how to maintain a healthy lifestyle. A child should be active and taking part in activities to feed and enhance the mind with beneficial knowledge, not reality TV. Children watch these shows believing that this is what family life really is. So they imitate the actions portrayed on these shows without questioning if it's wrong.

In one of the episodes Kourtney's fiance Scott got extremely drunk on the night of Kim's birthday, and got violent towards a waiter at a restaurant. The episode completely embarrassed the family. Every family has their problems and when these episodes air showing the Kardashian family having issues, people think that this family is just fame hungry and want media attention to gain popularity. There's a time when someone's private life should be kept private.

I don't understand how an entire family would show their private lives to millions of viewers and be the target for hate and criticism. It seems that much of reality TV is based upon power, money and fame. When it comes to the "hit" reality show Keeping up with the Kardashians, they are just among the many others who want to exploit their family to gain money and fame.

Reality TV distorts reality with unreality and many people enjoy watching someone's misfortunes. I don't agree with a family having a reality show displaying personal and private issues that should stay within a family.