Unhappy People Watch More TV

Hugh Pickens writes "A new study by sociologists at the University of Maryland concludes that unhappy people watch more TV, while people who describe themselves as 'very happy' spend more time reading and socializing. 'TV doesn't really seem to satisfy people over the long haul the way that social involvement or reading a newspaper does,' says researcher John P. Robinson. 'It's more passive and may provide escape — especially when the news is as depressing as the economy itself. The data suggest to us that the TV habit may offer short-run pleasure at the expense of long-term malaise.' Unhappy people also liked their TV more: 'What viewers seem to be saying is that while TV in general is a waste of time and not particularly enjoyable, "the shows I saw tonight were pretty good."' The researchers analyzed two sets of data spanning nearly 30 years (PDF), gathered from nearly 30,000 adults, and found that unhappy people watch an estimated 20 percent more television than very happy people, after taking into account their education, income, age, and marital status — as well as other demographic predictors of both viewing and happiness. 'TV can become a kind of opiate in a way. It's habitual, and tuning in can be an easy way of tuning out.'"

Comments

Correlation, not causality

[BlendieOfIndie]

This may be true for you, but the study is not saying that watching TV makes people unhappy, nor is it saying that being unhappy drives people to watch TV. It is merely stating there is a correlation between watching TV and being unhappy. Causality cannot be derived from correlation research.

Correlation does not imply causation

[br00tus]

I think this may be a case where correlation does not imply causation. I think it's rather obvious that a person who is spending his evenings hanging out with girls who look like Leighton Meester or Kristin Kreuk is going to be happier than those who go home and just watch people like that on their television. I think it's also obvious that reading good books is usually more enriching than watching some reality show of people competitively chasing the American dream, and who swallow a bottle of sleeping pills when they don't win. Recently I've been interviewing, so I have been reading books like Andrew Tanenbaum's Operating Systems and the like, which I already know will help me as it has answers to questions I've missed on some interviews (such as an indepth look into how pipes work in UNIX in terms of how file descriptors are handled etc.) Or I read some books on (pre)revolutionary China which expand my knowledge of the world, and which I sometimes refer to in conversations with people. Or I've read books by Sigmund Freud or Marvin Minsky on the brain, which not only are things which are interesting to discuss, but you could say have had a more significant impact on my life than some TV show would. I hear from too many people how some lame-o, poorly written book like the Fountainhead "changed their life"; but things like Freud's idea that unexpressed aggression can only be turned inward causing anxiety and depression, or Minsky's ideas on how rationality is not counterposed to being emotional in the brain, but that (to simplify it, perhaps too much) that rationality is just one of our emotions, or is parsed out in pieces among our emotions (considering all possibilities to a problem is euphoric, being very critical of each solution in turn is depressing), has probably changed my behavior somewhat.

Thinking of my own life, I usually sat down and vegetated in front of the tube when I was "beat" after coming home from work. If work was stressful, with too many hours, too little time spent on planning and too little money spent on resources, so that keeping all plates spinning fell more and more on the people working there, I come home tired and don't feel the energy to do anything else, work has sucked all my energy via too many hours and too much asked for in those hours - with the too much not being critical thinking but rushing from crisis to crisis. On the other hand, I've worked at places where hours are more reasonable and work is more enjoyable, so I have more time and energy at night to socialize or do other constructive things. Watching too much television might be a sign of unhappiness, but what are the causes of that unhappiness?

While I think the main cause of unhappiness leads to the correlation of watching too much television, I also think television has an anesthesizing and depressing effect of its own. Aside from watching the US electoral debates recently, I have very rarely watched any television. Almost all of it garbage. The only channels that are any good are the Independent Film Channel, which has good stuff sometimes, or sometimes C-SPAN or PBS has someone interesting on. The only things I used to watch regularly were the Daily Show and Colbert Report, but now I'm usually doing something else at that time.

Re:Factors to Consider

[nEoN nOoDlE]

The important thing is to balance the TV time with video gamespot.

There. Fixed that for you.