Is Television The Thief of Time and Happiness?

Submitted by tonyplant on January 2, 2006 - 17:12.

For most of my life I have practised happiness less than I’ve practised the piano, and the piano averages out at around three minutes per week. Like most of us, I know the activities that make a significant contribution to both my immediate and longer-term happiness, but I used to think that it was frivolous/selfish to devote any time or resources to them. I have, of course, never applied this sort of critical thinking to the time I used to spend watching television. I’m sure there’s some vague provision in the Magna Carta that establishes a man’s right to veg out in front of the TV while normal household chaos rages around him.

 

When I was growing up, there were programmes that gamely exhorted us to adopt more creative behaviours. Indeed, one show in the series Why Don’t You Turn Off Your Television Set and Do Something Less Boring? featured my brother and his friends swinging on branches round a local pond (you made your own entertainment in those days). But those were cosy admonitions that didn’t threaten us with cognitive dissolution or the wrecking of our health. However, a recurrent theme in the BBC’s recent Honey, We’re Killing the Kids is that notwithstanding the debate over the impact of advertising on children, excessive T.V. watching is a remarkable power for harm. And there seems to be a proliferation of websites full of jeremiads against television watching and its impact on our lives: sites like Turn Off Your T.V. and Limit T.V..

Americans spend an average of 29 hours a week watching television ... which means in a typical life span we devote 13 uninterrupted years to our TV sets! ... Cutting down just an hour a day would provide extra years of life — for music and family, exercise and reading, conversation and coffee. (Michael Medved)

 

The figures are probably not so different for parts of the UK. The Happiness Manifesto that was promoted in Making Slough Happy recommended cutting our television viewing by half. There is a lot of research that links television watching to increased obesity and chronic illness. Television watching has been linked to the development of Attention Deficit Disorder in children.

The hours spent in watching television and the links to unhappiness and depression are less apparent: although the connection is frequently made, Kahneman’s survey found that american women enjoy T.V. watching rather more than talking with their spouse; Bruno Frey and his colleagues offer a mixed picture as to the relationship between television watching and the level of life satisfaction. According to Frey, watching 90 mins or more of T.V. per day doesn’t lessen the happiness levels of groups such as pensioners or the unemployed, but it does harm the life-satisfaction levels of professionals.

The one clear picture from all of this research is that extensive television viewing is the thief of our time and tends to co-exist with other lifestyle choices that may work against our well-being. In a society that proclaims itself to be time-poor, watching less television might allow us an opportunity to practise those activities that do promote our happiness.

Copyright 2006, Tony Plant Happystance Project

television | Medved | Making Slough Happy | Kahneman | Happiness Manifesto | happiness | Frey | ADHD