Does Television Cause Unhappiness?

Apparently, I’m terribly unhappy.

I didn’t know I was. I thought I was pretty content. I mean, sure, there are things in my life I would change, given the option — a better job and more money would be nice. And I’d like to get a bit more sleep on average. But here I was, blissfully ignorant of the fact that I must be miserable, despite the fact that I have a great husband, a nice home, and wonderful family and friends that I love and who love me.

And it’s all because I watch too much television.

It’s a good thing I read this story, entitled “Unhappy People Watch More TV.” It led me to this story, “Watching Television, Channeling Unhappiness?” (Clever with the puns, that one.)

According to those stories, the study in question revolved around the question of how one’s level of happiness correlates to the amount of television one watches. It seems, from the results, that happy people spend more time being “socially active”, participating in church activities, and reading newspapers They also voted more. (That last one still mystifies me. I don’t know about you, but voting does not take up a significant amount of my time on a weekly basis.) Apparently, unhappy people watch 25 hours of television a week on average; happy people “only” watch 19 hours.

(At this point it should be noted — the news stories focus on the fact that the unhappy watch 20% percent more television. Setting aside the fact that an increase of 19 hours to 25 is an increase of 31.5%, not 20%, no one seems to be paying attention to the fact that what appears to be a huge increase when described that way is actually only a difference of six hours per week — less than one hour’s difference per day.)

My first thought after reading this was to rail against the biases of the scientists who performed the study. And they do seem very biased — one of them going so far as to take the clichéd (and pompous) approach of calling television an “opiate”, an “addictive activity” that would by definition “produce momentary pleasure but long-term misery and regret”. They also kindly noted that heavy television viewers are just the socially disadvantaged type to become addicted. The abstract seems to suggest that they set out to compare television to other, better activities. Even the title of the study, “What Do Happy People Do?”, suggests a predisposition that television watchers are sad and pathetic.

But after doing some poking around, I have a slew of problems with the methodology of the study as well:

• The researchers themselves note that their research is inconclusive as to whether television causes unhappiness or whether unhappiness causes television viewership. Which means that even if they’re right, they didn’t look into other potential reasons for unhappiness. (Their “predictors of happiness”, for what it’s worth, were age, education, and marital status.)



• The study doesn’t seem to address at all what kind of television the survey participants watched — for example, I’d bet that watching several hours of television news each day might just cause depression, and quickly. Just as watching several hours of say, professional wrestling each night, might cause significant loss of brain cells.



• The study seems to assume that social activity and television watching are mutually exclusive — that all television watching is done by lonely people, sitting in a sad, empty room, staring motionless at the set, with perhaps a cat or 12 to keep them company. In addition to the possibility of people watching television together, or doing other, more “productive” things with the television on, there’s also the watercooler effect — people watching shows with the intent of discussing them with friends the next day. As I’ve mentioned before, popular culture can be very useful in bringing people together.



• The study appears to be based entirely on self-reporting. I daresay that a lot of people either don’t realize how much television they watch, or, more likely are reluctant to admit it — particularly to Ph.D.-level researchers who will likely look down on them for doing so.

Do I watch a lot of television? Sure. Some (cough — Mom — cough) would say “too much”. But I still spend time with friends, read, participate in other hobbies, and have a very full life in general. It makes no more sense to accuse a television fan of needing a pseudo-narcotic to fill the unhappy void than it does to assume that everyone who enjoys food is substituting cookies for hugs.

Am I just being defensive? I don’t believe so. With all due apologies to Will Shakespeare, the fault, dear Brutus, is not in ourselves, but in the researchers. In looking for answers and enlightenment, I think there is a real danger of trying to pigeonhole the world into easily-quantified divisions — group a versus group b, you must be one or the other, you can’t be both. But that’s not real life. In real life, you can be a happy, productive person who really enjoys television. Or you can be miserable and lonely while appearing to have an active social life. People are all about the gray area, and trying to neatly label them is an exercise in futility.

Besides, trying too hard to quantify our universe generally sucks all the wonder right out of it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a full DVR of television to watch. Right after I go out to dinner with my husband.