Critical Reasoning

TV is the future because it remains king of all media. While handsets get hyped, the typical U.S. consumer watches more than 5 hours of TV a day, according to Nielsen, and even younger adults 18 to 24 years old-the supposed digital generation-spend 3 hours and 30 minutes on televisions daily compared to only 49 minutes on the Web and 20 minutes on mobile.

The above argument is most vulnerable to which of the following criticisms?

A) The argument fails to look into the possible causes of higher consumption of TV over other media
B) The argument makes an assumption that the consumer preferences will not change significantly over time without looking at the past trends.
C) The argument fails to consider that the average figures may not apply to every consumer of media.
D) The argument does not talk about population below 18 years of age, which will soon be part of the so called "digital generation"
E) The argument proposes that the same cause and effect may apply in the future as in the past without even looking at the possibility of existence of cause in the future.

Source: eGMAT

Please provide explanations for each options.

OA to be coming soon.

This question is a little weak in that there seems to be a superfluous idea in what seems to be the right answer. Still, there is a best answer.

(A) While in a way the causes matter, the argument is not about why TV is watched more. It's about TV being the future. Would understanding the causes help to predict the future? Probably, but not having information on the causes does not totally undermine the argument.

(B) This is the best answer, and really it could be shortened to "The argument makes an assumption that the consumer preferences will not change significantly over time." The "trends" part of this answer choice does not really matter, as really the argument could consider trends or something else in making the case that consumer preferences will not change over time.

The key flaw in that argument is that it claims that TV is the future but supports that claim only by saying that TV is the king in the present.

(C) This is a typical trap wrong answer. Averages rarely apply to all the members of a set. An average is often the average of a variety of values, and for this argument to work the figures do not have to apply to all consumers of media.

(D) This answer could be construed as being similar to answer B, in that the population below 18 years of age will in the future be part of the population above 18 years of age, but while possibly the habits of those below 18 years of age could be somehow relevant to the validity of the argument, the simple fact that that population is not mentioned is not a key flaw in the argument. The key flaw is what B says.

(E) The argument does not even really mention any cause and effect pattern. So this is clearly out.

The correct answer is B.