Television wields the same potential for modeling profanity, promiscuity, permissiveness, and counterfeit power. We have seen both the good and the bad, but in the tug of war between two forces, the latter is winning by a landslide.
Unhappy people watch lots more TV. The finding, announced on 13 Thursday, comes from a survey of nearly30,000 American adults conducted between 1975 and 2006 as part of the General Social Survey.
While happy people reported watching an average of 19 hours of televisionper week, unhappy people reported 25 hours a week. The results heldeven after taking into account education, income, age and maritalstatus.
In addition, happy individualswere more socially active, attended more religious services, voted moreand read a newspaper more often than their less-chipper counterparts.
The researchers are not sure, though, whether unhappiness leads to more television-watching or more viewing leads to unhappiness.
In fact, people say they like watching television: Past research hasshown that when people watch television they enjoy it. In thesestudies, participants reported that on a scale from 0 (dislike) to 10(greatly enjoy), TV-watching was nearly an 8.
But perhaps the high from watching television doesn’t last.
“These conflicting data suggest that TV may provide viewers withshort-run pleasure, but at the expense of long-term malaise,” saidresearcher John Robinson, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, College Park.
In this scenario, even the happiest camperscould turn into Debbie-downers if they continue to stare at theboob-tube. The researchers suggest that over time, television-viewingcould push out other activities that do have more lasting benefits.Exercise and sex come to mind, as do parties and other forms ofsocialization known to have psychological benefits.
Or, maybe television is simply a refuge for people who are already unhappy.
“TV is not judgmental nor difficult, so people with few social skillsor resources for other activities can engage in it,” Robinson and UMcolleague Steven Martin write in the December issue of the journalSocial Indicators Research.
They add, “Furthermore, chronic unhappiness can be socially andpersonally debilitating and can interfere with work and most social andpersonal activities, but even the unhappiest people can click a remoteand be passively entertained by a TV.”
The researchers say follow-up studies are needed to tease out the relationship between television and happiness.