Editor’s note: This article was first published in November 2015. Its cultural references, such as the Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar hairstyles and sagging trousers, are from 2015.
Until now, whenever we’ve talked about the downsides of watching too much television, it has been in terms of personal development and building wealth. And on that front it’s no secret by now, as Steve Siebold pointed out, that poor people watch TV while rich people read.
And it’s not for the reason some people think. Some believe poor people watch much more TV precisely because they’re poor and it’s a very cheap form of entertainment. That’s not true. Most likely you’re poor because you were already hooked on TV and turned your back on reading (which you need in order to acquire the knowledge that leads to success or a better life).
But if we leave financial education and personal development aside for a moment, let’s look at what science says, with well-established studies showing that watching television, especially as a child, makes it more likely that you’ll end up committing crimes as an adult, wrecking your chances of getting ahead in every area of life.
In a study covered in the book Freakonomics, the authors presented the results of tracking several groups of children from the 1950s onwards, taking advantage of the fact that television didn’t reach every city at the same time.
First of all, as it happens, the cities where television arrived earlier had higher crime rates. Across the different groups of children, each extra year of television the children watched was associated with a 4% rise in crime (both violent crime and property crime). In fact, using the arrival of television as a marker, by the 1970s the places where TV had arrived earlier had seen a 50% increase in property crime and a 25% increase in violent crime.
Why such a dramatic effect?
Although the study’s authors couldn’t give firm answers to this question, the results did show a clear pattern. Nor did they find that it was necessarily due to the content being watched, since the same thing happened with the children who watched the most television but didn’t watch violent programmes.
The most logical explanations would be other findings, such as the fact that children who watch a lot of television aren’t properly socialised and are less able to entertain themselves. According to psychology, it also makes those children want things they don’t have, or things other people have, even if that means stealing them when their parents can’t afford to buy them.
(See: 25 habits of successful people)
Negligent parents
When a child watches too much TV, it’s clearly not the child’s fault. A child has to adapt to the habits their parents have instilled (and parents are ultimately responsible for giving them discipline). Excessive TV viewing is therefore associated with parental negligence, among other things because it’s easier to sit a child in front of the TV than to look after them. It’s a problem that has grown worse today, with parents short of time because both of them work. OK, I’ve just said something silly, because nowadays the biggest TV consumers are families where both spouses are unemployed.
And what does television do to adults?
To begin with, behind television stands one of the most profitable industries there is: advertising, where a team of geniuses skilled at influencing consumers’ brains will basically make you feel like a miserable wretch. They’ll tell you you’re fat, that you’re bald, or that you’re a loser for not having a nice car.
First they have to show you someone with a big smile, to tell you subliminally that this person is happy because they have something you don’t. Does it work? You bet it does.
At best, you’ll just sit through a news bulletin that fills your head with every kind of incident: politicians stealing, accidents, kidnappings, murders…
And science also says that consuming negative news can make you ill.
Happy people don’t consume
Many people don’t quite grasp this idea, which marketing and sales experts know very well. If I want to sell something, I first have to create a need. Maybe you’ve been bald all your life and it never bothered you, but if you spend many hours in front of the television, you’ll very likely end up saying: “I don’t want to be bald, I want to be like that guy on the screen”, “I want a better car”, “I want to buy that product I didn’t know I wanted on instalments”, “I want a quick €300 loan”.
Television is what turned sagging trousers into a fashion among young people, when that used to happen only to the village idiot. It’s what makes your son look like a rooster with that mohawk, because Cristiano Ronaldo or Neymar are “super cool”. It’s what has turned underwear into outerwear.
And violent programmes and viewing have certainly played a part in rising aggression among young people.
Young people and adults can be just as easily influenced, even if we don’t realise it.
But setting all these points aside, we only need to look at the most obviously logical one: television takes time away from all kinds of activities. In particular, it can break down communication within a family and, of course, it takes time away from reading, a habit that stimulates the brain in positive ways and makes you smarter.
I can’t remember where I read a study that said happiness increases as the time you spend watching television decreases.
Featured image: electromechanic812291, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
