TV, like so many other things, is a tool. A powerful tool. And it’s only as good or as bad as the people who wield it and the purposes they apply to it.

    When we complain of the effects of a technology, we are really only complaining about people, about ourselves and others and what we have used it for. As with a child, if you’re given tools that outstrip your own ability to responsibly use them, they can be a great harm, and it might have been better if you had never had them.

    How do we weigh the cost of those who were harmed against those who benefited and the good things that were or could be done? Are there some powers that simply outstrip our ability to manage them in the long term? Are these some abilities that humans, as fragile and limited and self-centered as we are, simply weren’t meant to have? Powers so absolute that they cannot but cripple or corrupt us or make us dependent or decadent or abusive?

   It’s certainly possible. We might create things whose power and temptation we simply can’t manage and can only avoid. Things that take such powerful advantage of our instinctive selves that our conscious selves can’t manage them. Cocaine is an obvious example. But alcohol has been pretty hard to manage too. The extremes of wealth and fame, gambling, pornography, and a hundred other things consistently take hold of us in ways that go beyond our ability to consciously regulate them. 

    Automatic weapons and cars are more manageable, but still come with a lot of innate costs. Partly because of what they are, but mostly because of what we are + what we could do with something like that. We may manage them to some degree, but that kind of power will always test (and go beyond) the limits of what we can manage. 

    Social media is, perhaps, as example of a technology, much like nuclear weapons, that fundamentally outstrips our capabilities to properly use it. Maybe that’s a further extension of human reach than we are able to regulate. Creatures who arose in an environment of such limited capability and have the natures and passions of such a limited creature. Godlike power is naturally tempting to such a creature, but the possession of such a power is not something it is well-fitted to manage.

   So are TV and its modern media descendents good or bad? As a technology, as a tool whose measure is power and effectiveness and capability and refinement, it is astounding. But all such tools will only ever be used by creatures as good or bad as ourselves, and by their power only our own goodness and badness will be amplified. We don’t meet in them the greatness or corruption of anything but ourselves, grown large on our largesse.