TV and happiness

This report shows that children who watch lots of TV are unhappier than those who watch less. Matthew Yglesias wonders about the direction of causality:

I'll...suggest that people usually watch a lot of television due to a lack of other, more appealing options, rather than TV driving discontentment. But who knows?

Bruno Frey does. He reckons the causality runs from watching TV to being miserable.
First, the raw data. Europeans who watch more than 2 and a half hours of TV a day report, on average, a satisfaction with their life that is 0.2 points lower (on a scale of 1-10) than people who watch less than 30 minutes. This is one-third the difference in happiness between single people and married ones.
The evidence that it's watching TV that causes unhappiness, rather than vice versa, is:
1. Frey controls for the measurable sources of unhappiness - such as being single or unemployed - that might raise TV watching.
2. It's only people with a high opportunity cost of time (those who work flexible hours) who report lower happiness in response to more TV watching. Among people with a low opportuniy cost of time (such as the retired), there's no correlation between TV watching and unhappiness. This is consistent with TV-watching causing some people to regret wasting their time.
3. People who watch more TV are less happy with their financial circumstances (controlling for income), feel less safe, and trust others less - all of which reduce happiness. It seems more plausble that TV influences these beliefs than that these beliefs lead people to watch more TV.
The issue here isn't, of course, just about the poor quality of TV. It's about the philosophy of economics, and indeed, of human nature.
Ask a conventional neoclassical economist the question: "does watching TV make us happy?" and he'll reply: "Of course it does. That's why we do so much of it. Revealed preference shows that watching TV generates more pleasure than the alternatives. If it didn't, people would do something else."
Professor Frey's work suggests this answer won't do. People seem to be systematically bad at predicting what will make them happy; they consistently regret spending time in front the TV.
Free choices, then, don't maximize happiness. I for one find the implications of this rather disturbing.
Another thing: Professor Frey cites this book, which reports that American women say that cleaning makes them happier than watching TV. American men might want to use this fact.

Comments

[EU Serf]

I gave up watching the series Casualty because they kept killing the doctors and nurses. I gave up watching East Enders because everyone is so miserable.

My life became a lot happier.

[dearieme]

Mr Serf: do try the Fry and Laurie version of Jeeves and Wooster, old fruit. Just the ticket. Pip, pip.

[Paddy Carter]

I haven't thought about this too deeply - but isn't the concept of revealed preference rather non-refutable? I mean it is always possible to say that so-and-so is behaving like this-or-that because that's what they prefer to do.

[Rob]

"Free choices, then, don't maximize happiness. I for one find the implications of this rather disturbing"

well, actually, all that's been shown here - perhaps not in the book - is that free choice over how much telly you watch might not maximise happiness in all cases (since presumably the people how didn't watch as much telly chose not to, and are doing better happiness wise, and nothing is implied about other choices: it might be that we're systematically bad at choosing how much telly to watch, but not anything else). It doesn't say either about preference-satisfation either, as long as that's not the same thing as happiness. Also, why should we care about happiness, and particularly about maximising it: is it a point in favour of my torturing people that it makes me happy? No, if anything, it's a point against it, because it's wrong to enjoy doing such an awful thing. Also, now I think about it, it doesn't even show that free choice of some people about watching telly doesn't maximise happiness, because controling for other causes of unhappiness, unless we've isolated every other possible cause of unhappiness, tells us nothing other than, ruling out these things as causal agents, there is a correlation between unhappiness and watching lots of telly.

[Shuggy]

Hmmm, I don't watch much TV 'cos my telly's crap and I'm depressed because it's a perennial reminder that I can't afford a new one...

[Glen]

TV makes me depressed because I only watch sports and my team is not too good.

Anyway, its not free choice that maximizes happiness, its the result of those choices.

[esbonio]

Yes, Jeeves and Wooster is very good. I can fully understand why TV may make some people less happy. There is a lot of depressing rubbish on. One of the great things about Freeview is that it does provide an eclectic range of gems from the past (like Jeeves).

Of course if there really is nothing to watch one can always surf the net /read blogs. I wonder if that raises happiness?

As well as TV content positively deprssing people I also think the passive nature of TV engenders a post TV tristesse when one/some realise they could have done something more fulfilling than watching whetever just happened to be on.

[Monjo]

Maybe we become less happy because on TV there's a lot of beautiful women... and ugly guys having sex with them in programmes. If we had TV demonstrating sheep herding, or windmill construction... then we'd all feel much happier that our own lives weren't so bland.

[Rob Read]

Perhaps due to the nature of the license fee, the people of the UK feel they have allready (been forced to) payed for it, so they might as well maximise their use of broadcasting?

Could allowing people to purchase individual programs that interest them thus raise the happyness level?

[Georg Ortega]

Of course, if kids watched my program, The Happiness Show, www.thehappinessshow.com,(the world's first TV show entirely devoted to helping viewers become happier) they would quickly become much happier! Now all we need is for someone to create a network quality happiness show.

[John]

I've got rid of cable and am miserable now.... The PC is just not the same.