In the mid 1800s, Americans would listen to presidential debates that lasted multiple hours with interest and attention. In the past several decades, debates like these would be considered torture; instead, presidential debates nowadays consist of simple five-minute discussions. Ever since the invention of the television, America has become more and more centered on entertainment. What was once an intellectually strong nation has transformed into one that is ruled by the media and whose intelligence is quickly deteriorating. Now, essentially every part of daily life must be entertaining for Americans to pay any attention, whether it is politics, religion, or basic communication. Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death proclaims that public discourse has become entertainment, leading to apathetic generations; moreover, this causes the overall degeneration of knowledge.
As society moves away from text-based intellectualism and becomes less caring, it becomes more susceptible to media persuasion. Television and Internet can change opinions and notions with little effort. This can be seen through commercials, market advertising, as well as elections. In one case, Ramsey Clark was challenging Jacob Javits for his New York Senate seat. Clark used position papers to reach out to the public and show them his policies. Javits mainly used thirty-second television commercials. The commercials appealed to the instantaneous public: "He [Javits] won the election by the largest plurality in New York State history" (Postman 130). Society would much rather watch commercials and let them become the basis of its opinions than read researched position papers. The media wins out. This can also be seen in the modern day with so-called humanitarians attempting to help those who are miserable. A prime example is a viral video entitled KONY 2012. In this film advertisement for Invisible Children, ethos portrayed through harrowing pictures and smooth talking is used to solicit donations. Invisible Children say that its money goes toward helping rescue children in Uganda who are being forced to become soldiers under the vicious warlord Kony, who is the head of the Lord’s Resistance Army. The thirty-minute video available to watch on YouTube and Vimeo and has gathered over one hundred million views, thus far. Obviously, it has reached and informed many people of the problem of child soldiers. Yet Invisible Children is under scrutiny for its use of the donations. Many claim that the donations are being used to pay salaries and other 'expenses.' People were compelled to give money to this organization without fully researching the problem to looking into the organization itself. The people were taken in by the flashy video. Directly, this leads to the idea set forth in Postman’s book, that American people are becoming increasingly unconcerned with what is actually the truth. Society has become more swayed in its opinions as it moves away from books and toward film media as its primary source of information.
“Sensational, fragmented, impersonal,” (Postman 70) are the words chosen by Postman to describe the monumental invention of the telegraph by Samuel Finley Breese Morse in the mid-nineteenth century. Prior to the telegraph, information could only travel as fast as a human could transport it, which, at the time, was by train. The American public was fascinated by the “dazzle of distance and speed” (Postman 66) with which information was being sent and received. The telegraph changed the definition of intelligence to “knowing of lots of things, not knowing about them” (Postman 70). The telegraph, with the addition of photography, led to the format and organization of the modern day newspaper. Today, the front page of a newspaper usually consists of far away phenomena that have little to no effect on its readers. For example, the front page of The New York Times is brimming with controversies in Israel, Iran, Brazil, and China but seems to shy away from local or even state matters. How can the people of a community gain knowledge of their society’s strengths and weaknesses if they are only exposed to fragmented bits of information about worldly epidemics? Postman proves in Amusing Ourselves to Death that it is not that public citizens are lacking in the information about their communities, it is that they lack the interest. If the piece isn’t “shocking” or “dazzling” then why would anyone want to spend time trying to comprehend? Newspaper publishers, who need to make a profit, then comply to this demand by presenting shocking images, stories, and headlines, which over time have turned the newspaper into a form of entertainment. Therefore, rendering each succeeding generation slightly less-interested than the one before in what actually needs to be known.
Since society has increasingly become dependent on using entertainment in all forms of communication, it comes as no surprise that many forms of education of implemented film entertainment as basis of learning. However, film entertainment has been said to be an efficient mode of teaching concepts. One television show took this strategy and ran with it, “ ‘Sesame Street’ appeared to be an imaginative aid in solving the growing problem of teaching Americans how to read, while, at the same time, encouraging children to love school,” (Postman 143). Even though ‘Sesame Street’ is not a part of mandated curricula, many have parents embraced the show with “the eager hope that television could teach their children…” (Postman 143). Thereby reducing the parental need to work with children in reading. Even in schools, widely accepted has been the usage of film in course teachings. But really, how can this be considered a viable form of teaching when the United States’ ranking, from a 2003 study, versus countries of the developed word, in reading is eighteenth? Essentially, Postman’s argument has come true, that people are slowly, but surely, replacing emphasis upon literacy education to forms of entertainment. Then, in a study by the same company in 2009, it was determined that the United States has dropped further to position number twenty. Since film media has been introduced into the classroom, it has been seen that rather than produce smart citizens, ones that are dumber than ever are products. Most definitely, society has become complacent toward educating America’s future because it is so in favor of the god of entertainment.
People no longer get information from newspapers and books, but rather by watching TV and other forms of entertainment. The information received from shows has become more random as news stations begin to give people interesting stories instead of useful ones. Becoming a society based on entertainment if locally there are no natural disasters or big story to be told the news will go half way across the country to find something exciting. As the shows get more exciting people begin to believe anything they see on TV. When the KONY 2012 video became popular the gruesome pictures and the flashy video took people back. The people making this video knew what attracted people to watch different programs and they took advantage of this to make their video so popular. Media and entertainment has caused people to know more useless information and will slowly lead to the lowering of education and knowledge.