Study: Unhappy People Watch More TV
November 18th, 2008I’ve noticed a profound link between poverty and TV. I don’t know if it’s a symptom of poverty or one of the possible causes of it, but poor people tend to watch a lot of TV.
I don’t mean poor, in terms of intentionally choosing a low income lifestyle. I mean poor as in, broke, trapped, miserable, mongrel-on-chain-in-driveway poor. The TV will be on most of the time.
Via: The Feed:
An extensive new research study has found that unhappy people watch more TV while those consider themselves happy spend more time reading and socializing.
The University of Maryland analyzed 34 years of data collected from more than 45,000 participants and found that watching TV might make you feel good in the short term but is more likely to lead to overall unhappiness.
“The pattern for daily TV use is particularly dramatic, with ‘not happy’ people estimating over 30% more TV hours per day than ‘very happy’ people,” the study says. “Television viewing is a pleasurable enough activity with no lasting benefit, and it pushes aside time spent in other activities — ones that might be less immediately pleasurable, but that would provide long-term benefits in one’s condition. In other words, TV does cause people to be less happy.”
The study, published in the December issue of Social Indicators Research, analyzed data from thousands of people who recorded their daily activities in diaries over the course of several decades. Researchers found that activities such as sex, reading and socializing correlated with the highest levels of overall happiness.
Watching TV, on the other hand, was the only activity that had a direct correlation with unhappiness.
“TV is not judgmental nor difficult, so people with few social skills or resources for other activities can engage in it,” says the study. “Furthermore, chronic unhappiness can be socially and personally debilitating and can interfere with work and most social and personal activities, but even the unhappiest people can click a remote and be passively entertained by a TV. In other words, the causal order is reversed for people who watch television; unhappiness leads to television viewing.”
Unhappily married couples also watch more TV: “(Happily married couples) engage in 30% more sex, and they attend religious services more and read newspapers on more days,” reports the study. “While those not happy with their marriages watch more TV.”
Yet there may be good news here for broadcasters. Commenting on the study, co-author John P. Robinson said the worsening economy could boost TV viewing.
“Through good and bad economic times, our diary studies, have consistently found that work is the major activity correlate of higher TV viewing hours,” Robinson says. “As people have progressively more time on their hands, viewing hours increase.”
Concludes the study: “These points have parallels with addiction; since addictive activities produce momentary pleasure but long-term misery and regret. People most vulnerable to addiction tend to be socially or personally disadvantaged, with TV becoming an opiate.”
Concludes the study: “These points have parallels with addiction; since addictive activities produce momentary pleasure but long-term misery and regret. People most vulnerable to addiction tend to be socially or personally disadvantaged, with TV becoming an opiate.”
My own early-life experience validates this in royal spades. How much TV was a cause of my early developmental problems results in a lot of chicken-egg speculation that really serves little constructive purpose. I am pretty sure its influence made my problems worse, though.
Years ago, in Amerika, I used a veterinarian whose entire business was housecalls — was less traumatic for my elderly kitties. He told me how his heart always sunk when he’d be greeted at the door by an obese pet owner with a blaring TV in the background. He said they’d motion him to where their sick pet was crouching and then go back to watching TV. And then after he was through ministering to the poor pooch or kitty, very often the petowner would say he couldn’t afford to pay the bill and would see about it “later” (even though clients are notified when they book an appointment what the cost estimate is and that all bills are to be paid at the time of the visit by check or cash). The vet said that these pet-owning TV addicts would invariably be sucking down a 6-pack during weekday working hours, but they were “too poor” to contribute toward his bill, and couldn’t be bothered to get up from their couch while they confessed their poverty. As he let himself out the door, he knew that his bill would never get paid, and he’d have yet another TV-blaring slob to slap on his deadbeat, no repeat list.
I despise TV-watching. It recalls bitter memories of my severely neglectful mother, who used her TV-watching as one of many excuses as to why she had no time to take care of her children’s basic emotional and physical needs.
Terence McKenna said (IIRC) TV viewing was the most widespread addictive behaviour in the developed world.
My mother never watched TV.
My father watched a lot of TV after dinner. But he played a lot of sport and did a lot of social activities too.
I watched way too much TV when I was a kid, but since leaving high school that went way down, and is now zero again.
When I see the figures on kids with their own TVs in their bedrooms, it really frightens me.
Whenever I watch TV now, I usually just feel embarrassed at how people can sit through such crap all the time. And think it’s normal.
Whoah.
I think that it’s an escape mechanism, more than anything. When your life sucks you want to escape. I grew up in severe poverty and have seen it many times since.
When I see the figures on kids with their own TVs in their bedrooms, it really frightens me.
Whenever I watch TV now, I usually just feel embarrassed at how people can sit through such crap all the time. And think it’s normal.
Based on my initial comment, would you be surprised to hear that I was one of those kids? And this was in the late 70’s/ early 80’s, when the program-quality became truly mind-numbing!
The quality-levels are so appalling now that even I can barely stomach it. And should any quality shows such as “Jericho” make it onto prime-time network television, the suits will make sure they get killed dead, dead, DEAD!