DOES TELEVISION REDUCE SOCIAL INTERACTION?

Does Television reduce social interaction?

Does Television reduce social interaction?

Television is a ubiquitous part of adolescents' lives, and its effects are controversial. Many studies have reported several negative consequences of television viewing, including increases in obesity, attentional problems and aggression, and decreases in several measures of academic achievement.

In contrast, other studies have shown that some types of programming are associated with positive developmental outcomes. There have also been several randomized interventions aimed at reducing television as a means of decreasing negative outcomes.

This paper examines the importance of social interactions in adolescent television choices. Social interactions follow the conceptual idea of the establishment of a social norm of television viewing within peer groups. The idea of interdependent choices, or social interactions, across individuals, where individual choices are affected by the choices of peers, is becoming established in the social sciences as an important aspect of individual decision making. Current research examines potential social interactions in crime, school attendance, and unemployment.

For example, a student might choose to attend school on a particular day based on whether his or her friends will attend school. The intuitive reason for this interdependence in choices is that friends want to be involved in activities together whether the activities are pleasant (eg, skipping school to go to the mall) or unpleasant (eg, attending school).

Individual choices of how many hours to watch television are determined, in part, by choices by schoolmates. The inclusion of potential confounding variables and the use of instrumental variables suggest that these associations may be causal; not only are television choices correlated within school, but decisions by peers of how much television to watch affects television choices at the individual level. However, since this framework can only show the existence of social influences on individual decisions and not the mechanism underlying ...