“A primary concern is that television’s lessons and imagery may not reflect the real world. Some viewers, especially young children and those who watch more television, may not distinguish between symbolic and social reality.”
(Signorielli, Nancy, and Susan Kahlenberg. "Television's World of Work in the Nineties." Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 45.1 (2001): 4-22.)
I believe that this statement is entirely true. Nowadays the typical “American” family consists of a father who has a typical nine to five job, a mother who stays at home to clean the house and raise the children and the children go off to school during the day. However television does not portray and represent the families with single mothers, divorced parents, and families of different ethnicities. It wasn’t until the 1990s that we began to see a change in the family representations in television. Children today spend a lot more time watching TV instead of interacting with the outside world and other children. Therefore, the television is their only outside source of how the world is. If the families on television shows are not representational of real life, then they are going to believe something different to be the truth. This can lead to children to have a distorted view of what life really is. The majority of families do not live the typical “American dream” that you see on TV. Every family has their issues and discrepancies. Children who feel like their families do not live up to the standards of a typical family, may feel like something is wrong with their family or that theirs is dysfunctional.
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