Reality television has taken over the everyday lives of teenagers, adults and children, but is this reality television real? Many TV shows are on all throughout the day and everyone watches TV for at least a little while. The shows like Jersey Shore, The Real World, The Hills and The Bachelor are all great examples of what television has come to this day in age. Each of those shows give teenagers and children ideas of what partying and adult life is like, but the reality of the shows is just lies.


The new twenty first century television is so beyond any other century and has turned TV into a world of lies and make belief. Just so they can keep up television ratings. The hit show Jersey Shore, shows viewers a degrading image of Italians and the life style they live. Each episode is filled with people partying and drinking and making fools of themselves on television. If you look behind the screen and the entire show the “characters”, you realize do not actually act like they do on camera when they are home and off the show. The members of the Jersey Shore house even have on screen nicknames such as “Snookie, The Situaction, Jwoww” all of those name are their television personas. Behind the screen they are different people, they are real people not the reality star everyone wants to see.

Shows for a more mature audience are just as fake, the hit show The Bachelor has been many times accused fobeingg phoney and having fake men and women on the show who are really actors. Yet the show is still called a reality show. Never do you see a reality show without drama or without a fist fight. Is it all screened? Or is it all scripted? Many people believe so, and many people would rather not think about it because they like the entertainment and excitement of other peoples lives. Some people who watch the shows every week, begin to live their livestyles like the people on the shows. Dressing like “Snookie” is now an everyday thing. Kids age thirteen and even younger want to be just like her. Is she really a good role model? Of course not, or at least not what she portrays herself to be on television.

I do not believe there will ever be a show that is a complete reality show, because what fun would that be? The fake lives people live are almost like reading a book they are fictional characters only to be shown on television. Yet when they are not on camera obeingg filmed for a show they become who they really are, not what the camera wants to see. It may seem like the camera is the evil behind the reality television. That maybe the camera is to blame, but how would we know? The reality stars are actors, so should Reality Television just become Television again?