The Reality of Reality Television

Reality television has become a part of American, and world, culture. People around the globe are fascinated by the prospect of watching “real” people face challenges and hardships. I believe that reality television needs to be taken out of programming. This needs to be done because what we deem as reality is not such. The stars of these programs do not act the same way on television that they do in everyday life. The select few that do are indeed a rare breed. Reality television does nothing but glamorize a non-existent lifestyle. In addition, it also ruins lives of the people it concerns. One such example is the former series Jon and Kate Plus 8. It followed the daily running of a family that has eight children, one set of twins and one set of sextuplets. The series glamorized the life of the parents. It lead to the family breaking apart when the father was proven to be unfaithful. The lives of each person was destroyed as the parents bitterly divorced, putting the children in an unacceptable limelight. The children were put in the middle as the world watched the parents leave each other, with the children in the middle. This is simply one example of how reality television destroys lives and families.