Social aspects of television

Current research is discovering that individuals suffering from social isolation can employ television to create what is termed a parasocial or faux relationship with characters from their favorite television shows and movies as a way of deflecting feelings of loneliness and social deprivation.[1] Just as an individual would spend time with a real person sharing opinions and thoughts, pseudo-relationships are formed with TV characters by becoming personally invested in their lives as if they were a close friend[1] so that the individual can satiate the human desire to form meaningful relationships and establish themselves in society. Jaye Derrick and Shira Gabriel of the University of Buffalo, and Kurt Hugenberg of Miami University found that when an individual is not able to participate in interactions with real people, they are less likely to indicate feelings of loneliness when watching their favorite TV show.[2]

They refer to this finding as the social surrogacy hypothesis.[1] Furthermore, when an event such as a fight or argument disrupts a personal relationship, watching a favorite TV show was able to create a cushion and prevent the individual from experiencing reduced self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy that can often accompany the perceived threat.[1] By providing a temporary substitute for acceptance and belonging that is experienced through social relationships, TV helps to relieve feelings of depression and loneliness when those relationships are not available. This benefit is considered a positive consequence of watching television, as it can counteract the psychological damage that is caused by isolation from social relationships.

Several studies have found that educational television has many advantages. The Media Awareness Network[3] explains in its article "The Good Things about Television"[4] that television can be a very powerful and effective learning tool for children if used wisely. The article states that television can help young people discover where they fit into society, develop closer relationships with peers and family, and teach them to understand complex social aspects of communication.[4] Dimitri Christakis cites studies in which those who watched Sesame Street and other educational programs as preschoolers had higher grades, were reading more books, placed more value on achievement and were more creative. Similarly, while those exposed to negative role models suffered, those exposed to positive models behaved better.[5]

In the Parent Circle, by PC exclusives, Priscilla J. S. Selvaraj points out several benefits of watching TV on an educational level and on an emotional level. She explains that it can, "... be used... both at home as well as in classrooms. With the range of channels on offer, there is no dearth [lack] of educational content."[6] In addition to these benefits watching television brings awareness to their society, and can also help people become bilingual.[6] Because they are learning things outside the classroom, it is making things easier for children inside it. This creates happiness and can raise the energy too. Being energetic and happy allows your body to be more active. More activity makes people healthier.

Emotionally, watching television can help strengthen the bond of a family.[6] This being said spending time with family or loved ones can cause your body to release endorphins that can make you happier as well.

A family watching television in the United States in 1958

In 1989 and 1994, social psychologists Douglas T. Kenrick and Steven Neuberg with co-authors demonstrated experimentally that following exposure to photographs or stories about desirable potential mates, human subjects decrease their ratings of commitment to their current partners.[11][12] Citing the Kenrick and Neuberg studies, in 1994, evolutionary biologist George C. Williams and psychiatrist Randolph M. Nesse observed that television (and other mass communications such as films) were arousing envy and causing lower feelings of commitment to spouses as a consequence of broadcasting the lives of most successful members of society (e.g. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous) and of the entertainment and advertising industry's hiring of physically attractive actors and actresses.[13] Also citing the research by Kenrick and Neuberg and their co-authors, social psychologist David Buss has also argued that the evolutionary mismatch from constant exposure to images of physically attractive women in advertising and entertainment likely cause lower levels of commitment by men to spouses and partners.[14]

In 1948, 1 percent of U.S. households owned at least one television while 75 percent did by 1955,[15] and by 1992, 60 percent of all U.S. households received cable television subscriptions.[16] In 1980, 1 percent of U.S. households owned at least one videocassette recorder while 75 percent did by 1992.[15] From 1960 to 2011, the percentage of all U.S. adults who were married declined from 72 percent to a record low of 51 percent,[17] with the percentage of U.S. adults over the age of 25 who had never married rising to a record high of one-fifth by 2014 and the percentage of U.S. adults living without spouses or partners rising to 42 percent by 2017.[18][19]

One theory says that when a person plays video games or watches TV, the basal ganglia portion of the brain becomes very active and dopamine is released. Some scientists believe that release of high amounts of dopamine reduces the amount of the neurotransmitter available for control of movement, perception of pain and pleasure and formation of feelings.[20] A study conducted by Herbert Krugman found that in television viewers, the right side of the brain is twice as active as the left side, which causes a state of hypnosis.[21]

Research shows that watching television starting at a young age can profoundly affect children's development. These effects include obesity, language delays, and learning disabilities. Physical inactivity while viewing TV reduces necessary exercise and leads to over-eating. Language delays occur when a child does not interact with others. Children learn language best from live interaction with parents or other individuals. Resulting learning disabilities from over-watching TV include ADHD, concentration problems and even reduction of IQ. Children who watch too much television can thus have difficulties starting school because they are not interested in their teachers. Children should watch a maximum of 2 hours daily if any television.[22]

Many scientific studies has been published about the embedded use of subliminal messages in songs, video and digital TV, trying to manipulate the choices of watchers and the public opinion. This point of view has hold up some countries to approve law, with the purpose of protecting citizens and their children.

In his book Bowling Alone, Robert D. Putnam noted a decline of public engagement in local social and civic groups from the 1960s to the 1990s. He suggested that television and other technology that individualizes leisure time accounted for 25% of this change.[23]

Studies in both children and adults have found an association between the number of hours of television watched and obesity.[24] A study found that watching television decreases the metabolic rate in children to below that found in children at rest.[25] Author John Steinbeck describes television watchers:

"I have observed the physical symptoms of television-looking on children as well as on adults. The mouth grows slack and the lips hang open; the eyes take on a hypnotized or doped look; the nose runs rather more than usual; the backbone turns to water and the fingers slowly and methodically pick the designs out of brocade furniture. Such is the appearance of semi-consciousness that one wonders how much of the 'message' of television is getting through to the brain."[26]

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that children under two years of age should not watch any television and children two and older should watch one to two hours at most. Children who watch more than four hours of television a day are more likely to become overweight.[27][28]

TV watching and other sedentary activities are associated with greater risk of heart attack,[29] diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and death.[30]

Legislators, scientists and parents are debating the effects of television violence on viewers, particularly youth. Fifty years of research on the impact of television on children's emotional and social development have not ended this debate.[31][32]

Some scholars[31] have claimed that the evidence clearly supports a causal relationship between media violence and societal violence. However, other authors[32][33] note significant methodological problems with the literature and mismatch between increasing media violence and decreasing crime rates in the United States.

A 2002 article in Scientific American suggested that compulsive television watching, television addiction, was no different from any other addiction, a finding backed up by reports of withdrawal symptoms among families forced by circumstance to cease watching.[34] However, this view has not yet received widespread acceptance among all scholars, and "television addiction" is not a diagnoseable condition according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual -IV -TR.

A longitudinal study in New Zealand involving 1000 people (from childhood to 26 years of age) demonstrated that "television viewing in childhood and adolescence is associated with poor educational achievement by 12 years of age".[35] The same paper noted that there was a significant negative association between time spent watching television per day as a child and educational attainment by age 26: the more time a child spent watching television at ages 5 to 15, the less likely they were to have a university degree by age 26. However, recent research (Schmidt et al., 2009) has indicated that, once other factors are controlled for, television viewing appears to have little to no impact on cognitive performance, contrary to previous thought.[36] However, this study was limited to cognitive performance in childhood. Numerous studies have also examined the relationship between TV viewing and school grades.[37]

A study published in Sexuality Research and Social Policy concluded that parental television involvement was associated with greater body satisfaction among adolescent girls, less sexual experience amongst both male and female adolescents, and that parental television involvement may influence self-esteem and body image, in part by increasing parent-child closeness.[38] However, a more recent article by Christopher Ferguson, Benjamin Winegard, and Bo Winegard cautioned that the literature on media and body dissatisfaction is weaker and less consistent than often claimed and that media effects have been overemphasized.[39] Similarly recent work by Laurence Steinbrerg and Kathryn Monahan has found that, using propensity score matching to control for other variables, television viewing of sexual media had no impact on teen sexual behavior in a longitudinal analysis.[40]

Many studies have found little or no effect of television viewing on viewers[41] (see Freedman, 2002). For example, a recent long-term outcome study of youth found no long-term relationship between watching violent television and youth violence or bullying.[42]

On July 26, 2000 the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry stated that "prolonged viewing of media violence can lead to emotional desensitization toward violence in real life."[43] However, scholars have since analyzed several statements in this release, both about the number of studies conducted, and a comparison with medical effects, and found many errors.[44]

Television is used to promote commercial, social and political agendas. Public service announcements (including those paid for by governing bodies or politicians), news and current affairs, television advertisements, advertorials and talk shows are used to influence public opinion. The Cultivation Hypothesis suggests that some viewers may begin to repeat questionable or even blatantly fictitious information gleaned from the media as if it were factual. Considerable debate remains, however, whether the Cultivation Hypothesis is well supported by scientific literature, however, the effectiveness of television for propaganda (including commercial advertising) is unsurpassed. The US military and State Department often turn to media to broadcast into hostile territories or nations.[45]

Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney watching television on 9/11

While the effects of television programs depend on what is actually consumed, media theorist Neil Postman argued in Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) that the dominance of entertaining, but not informative programming, creates a politically ignorant society, undermining democracy: "Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least-informed people in the Western world."[46] In a four-part documentary series released by Frontline in 2007, former Nightline anchor Ted Koppel stated, "To the extent that we're now judging journalism by the same standards that we apply to entertainment – in other words, give the public what it wants, not necessarily what it ought to hear, what it ought to see, what it needs, but what it wants – that may prove to be one of the greatest tragedies in the history of American journalism."[47] Koppel also suggested that the decline in American journalism was made worse since the revocation of the FCC fairness doctrine provisions during the Reagan Administration, while in an interview with Reason, Larry King argued that the revocation of the Zapple doctrine's equal-time provisions in particular led to a decline in the public discourse and the quality of candidates running in U.S. elections.[48]

Following the first presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon during the 1960 U.S. presidential election (for which the equal-time rule was suspended), most television viewers thought Kennedy had won the debate while most radio listeners believed that Nixon had won.[49][50][51][52] Gallup polls in October 1960 showed Kennedy moving into a slight but consistent lead over Nixon after the candidates were in a statistical tie for most of August and September before the debates occurred.[53] Kennedy would ultimately win the election with 49.7 percent of the popular vote to Nixon's 49.5 percent. Other polls revealed that more than half of all voters had been influenced by the debates and 6 percent alone claimed that the debates alone had decided their choice.[54] Although the actual influence of television in these debates has been argued over time,[55] recent studies by political scientist James N. Druckman determined that the visually-based television may have allowed viewers to evaluate the candidates more on their image (including perceived personality traits) than radio which allowed the transmission of voice alone. Termed "viewer-listener disagreement", this phenomenon may still affect the political scene of today.[56]

After the presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, INSEAD economics professor Maria Guadalupe and New York University (NYU) Steinhardt School educational theatre professor Joe Salvatore adapted excerpts of the debate transcripts into a one-act play titled Her Opponent that replicated the language, facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice, other body language, and nonverbal communication verbatim of Clinton and Trump during the debates by two fictional characters, but with the characters representing Clinton and Trump being gender-flipped.[57] Later performed off-Broadway by fellow NYU Steinhardt School educational theatre professors Rachel Whorton and Daryl Embry for an open-ended run at the Jerry Orbach Theater beginning in April 2017,[58] the audience members that attended its premiere at the Provincetown Playhouse the previous January were surveyed before the performance about the Clinton-Trump debates and after the performance about the gender-flipped adaptation of the debates, and the survey found that the Clinton supporters in the audience found Trump's debate performance not offensive and more effective when delivered by a woman and Clinton's debate performance to be offensive and less effective when delivered by a man.[59][60]

In A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), philosopher David Hume observed that "reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."[61] Citing Hume, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that his research with anthropologist Richard Shweder on moral dumbfounding along with research about the evolution of morality vindicates an intuitionist model of human moral reasoning,[62] and Haidt cites verse 326 of the Dhammapada where Siddhārtha Gautama compares the dual process nature of human moral reasoning metaphorically to a wild elephant and a trainer as a preferable descriptive analogy in comparison to a metaphor introduced by Plato in Phaedrus of a charioteer and a pair of horses.[63][64]

Along with differential psychologist Dan P. McAdams, Haidt also argues that the Big Five personality traits constitute the lowest in a three-tiered model of personality with the highest level being a personal narrative identity constituted of events from episodic memory with moral developmental salience.[65] As an example, Haidt cites how Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards recollects his experience as a choirboy in secondary school in his autobiography as being formative in the development of Richards political views along what Haidt refers to as the "authority/respect" moral foundation.[66][67][68] Along with political scientist Sam Abrams, Haidt argues that political elites in the United States became more polarized beginning in the 1990s as the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation (fundamentally shaped by their living memories of World War I, World War II, and the Korean War) were gradually replaced with Baby boomers, Generation Jones, and Generation X (fundamentally shaped by their living memories of the U.S. culture war of the 1960s and 1970s).[69]

Haidt argues that because of the difference in their life experience relevant to moral foundations, Baby boomers and Generation Jones may be more prone to what he calls "Manichean thinking,"[70] and along with Abrams and FIRE President Greg Lukianoff, Haidt argues that changes made by Newt Gingrich to the parliamentary procedure of the U.S. House of Representatives beginning in 1995 made the chamber more partisan.[69][71] In 1923, 1 percent of U.S. households owned at least one radio receiver which grew to a majority by 1931 and 75 percent did by 1937, while from 1948 to 1955, the percentage of U.S. households that owned at least one television increased from 1 percent to 75 percent.[15][72] Because of this, many Baby boomers, Generation Jones, and Geneation X have never known a world without television, and unlike during World War II (1939–1945) when most U.S. households owned radios but did not have television (and while radio broadcasts were regulated under the FCC Mayflower doctrine), during the Vietnam War (1955–1975) most U.S. households did own at least one television set.

Also, unlike the first half of the 20th century, protests of the 1960s civil rights movement (such as the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965) were televised, along with the Stand in the Schoolhouse Door by Alabama Governor George Wallace and the Report to the American People on Civil Rights by President Kennedy in 1963 (which led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the long-term political realignment of the Southern United States as a whole to the Republican Party in turn), the police brutality and the urban race rioting during the latter half of the decade, the multi-decade surge in the U.S. homicide rate (that increased by a factor of 2.5 between 1957 and 1980), rates of rape, assault, robbery, theft, and other crime that began in the mid-1960s and did not return to comparable levels until the mid-to-late 1990s (after experiencing declining homicide rates during the Great Depression, World War II, and during the initial Cold War), and television was used increasingly used for negative campaigning and dog-whistle attack ads on wedge issues (such as the Daisy advertisement in 1964 and the Willie Horton advertisement in 1988).[list 1] In 1992, 60 percent of U.S. households held cable television subscriptions in the United States,[16] and Haidt, Abrams, and Lukianoff argue that the expansion of cable television since the 1990s, and Fox News in particular since 2015 in their coverage of student activism over political correctness at colleges and universities in the United States, is one of the principal factors amplifying political polarization in the United States.[69][71] In September and December 2006 respectively, Luxembourg and the Netherlands became the first countries to completely transition from analog to digital television, while the United States commenced its transition in 2008.

Haidt and journalists Bill Bishop and Harry Enten have noted the growing percentage of the U.S. presidential electorate living in "landslide counties", counties where the popular vote margin between the Democratic and Republican candidate is 20 percentage points or greater.[81][82][83][84] In 1976, only 27 percent of U.S. voters lived in landslide counties, which increased to 39 percent by 1992.[68][85] Nearly half of U.S. voters resided in counties that voted for George W. Bush or John Kerry by 20 percentage points or more in 2004.[86] In 2008, 48 percent of U.S. voters lived in such counties, which increased to 50 percent in 2012 and increased further to 61 percent in 2016.[68][85] In 2020, 58 percent of U.S. voters lived in landslide counties.[87]

At the same time, the 2020 U.S. presidential election marked the ninth consecutive presidential election where the victorious major party nominee did not win a popular vote majority by a double-digit margin over the losing major party nominee(s), continuing the longest sequence of such presidential elections in U.S. history that began in 1988 and in 2016 eclipsed the previous longest sequences from 1836 through 1860 and from 1876 through 1900.[88][note 1][89] In contrast, in 14 of the 17 U.S. presidential elections from 1920 through 1984 (or approximately 82 percent) the victorious candidate received more than 50 percent of the vote (with 1948, 1960, and 1968 excepted) while in 10 of the 17 elections (or approximately 59 percent) the victorious candidate received a majority of the popular vote by a double-digit margin (1920, 1924, 1928, 1932, 1936, 1952, 1956, 1964, 1972, and 1984).

Research has been conducted to determine how television informs self-identity while reinforcing stereotypes about culture. Some communication researchers have argued that television viewers have become reliant on prime-time reality shows and sitcoms to understand difference as well as the relationship between television and culture. According to a 2013 study on matriarchal figures on the shows The Sopranos and Six Feet Under, researchers stated that the characters of Carmela Soprano and Ruth Fisher were written as stereotypical non-feminists who rely upon their husbands to provide an upscale lifestyle.[94] They posited that these portrayals served as evidence that the media influences stereotype ideologies about class and stressed the importance of obtaining oral histories from "actual mothers, caretakers, and domestic laborers" who have never been accurately portrayed.

Pop culture researchers have studied the social impacts of popular television shows, arguing that televised competition shows such as The Apprentice send out messages about identity that may cause viewers to feel inadequate. According to Justin Kidd television media perpetuates narrow stereotypes about social classes while also teaching viewers to see themselves as inferior and insufficient due to personal aspects such as "race or ethnicity, gender or gender identity, social class, disability or body type, sexuality, age, faith or lack thereof, nationality, values, education, or another other aspect of our identities."[96]