Health

Unhappy people watch more TV

by jessica.lam | November 18, 2008 at 03:26 pm

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What makes human beings happy? In an effort to give more insight to the question, studies have been done to measure the levels of activities of happy and unhappy people. So far, they've found that unhappy folks sit in front of the TV more often.

How do they measure happiness anyways?

Whether it is unhappiness that causes people to watch more TV or TV causes people to be unhappy - it isn't clear and I don't blame them. It's hard not to get depressed with what is on the tube these days - with drama and excitement around every network "corner" I've been a little drama-ed out.

In a General Social Survey of 30,000 people, from 1975 to 2006, American researchers have come out with this conclusion.

While happy people reported watching an average of 19 hours of television per week, unhappy people reported 25 hours a week. The results held even after taking into account education, income, age and marital status.

In addition, happy individuals were more socially active, attended more religious services, voted more and read a newspaper more often than their less-chipper counterparts.

n fact, people say they like watching television: Past research has shown that when people watch television they enjoy it. In these studies, 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.

Prof Martin (one of the principle researchers) compared compulsively watching television to drug addiction: "Addictive activities produce momentary pleasure but long-term misery and regret."

He added: "People most vulnerable to addiction tend to be socially or personally disadvantages, with TV becoming an opiate."

By contrast, those who surf the web a lot are no more happy or unhappy than average, they discovered.

Their report has been published in the Social Indicators Research journal.