A new study from Springer (no relation to Jerry) found in a 30 year analysis that, surprise, happy people watch less television than unhappy people.
The study is somewhat more obsessed with television than other factors because other surveys and data point to TV being good for general happiness, which even the study seems to conclude is actually true in the short run. But In the end that short-term happiness seems to come at the expense of other things and leads to longer-term unhappiness.
"These conflicting data suggest that TV may provide viewers with short-run pleasure, but at the expense of long-term malaise," said Professor John Robinson. He also noted that earlier general satisfaction surveys also showed people rating TV below average as a significantly less satisfying free-time activity on the whole. "What viewers seem to be saying is that while TV in general is a waste of time and not particularly enjoyable, the shows I saw tonight were pretty good."
The difference between the unhappy people and the very happy people in the study amounted to a difference of 48 minutes per day.
Meanwhile, very happy people had sex 10 times more a year than unhappy people. The difference between being unhappy and "somewhat" happy seemed to be having sex seven times less a year. Both the very happy and the unhappy used the internet more than six hours a week, but the very happy people used it 24 minutes less a week than the unhappy people.
The PDF file on the "What do Happy People Do?" study is available for download.
This all sounds about right.
yeah, it’s probably better fodder for theobvious.com, but Sippey stopped new entries years ago.
Obviously if people are spending more of their waking hours having sex, they would have less waking time to watch TV.
However, I would submit that they have the correlation backwards. It should be that people are happier *because* they’re having more sex, with people being less having when they’re having less. Seems they can’t even get the obvious stuff right… or did I stumble onto a chicken or the egg situation???
I don’t think should relate more sex and less tv together because there could be many other factors that i think that they didn’t consider. There are many other reasons people are happy, it shouldn’t just be sex! I don’t think that these should even be considered in the same sentence. I don’t even think this is a real study this just seems so ridiculous. How could you conclude something like this when most people probably lied about how much sex they are having. The amounts that people gave them were prob guessstimations. I mean who knows this could be the case, but why would it be. Sex does help us to be happier, but who said that it was good sex. Most woman don’t have a good sex and even the good isn’t good enough. I just think that we should consider all of the following before we make conclusions. Even life in general should be that way we jump to too many conclusions before we even asseses the situation. We like to judge and just listen to the first thing we hear and then we really think about it and realize not everything is true from what you hear. If you think about all the “facts” that we have in this society most of them are just what we conclude after an experiment or investigation. Judgements shouldn’t be passed if there are no facts to support them.
Kara, they considered other factors if you look at the study (like hanging out with friends, family, going to religous services, job, etc). I just took the obvious low road to an easy blog post.
The conclusion: TV is addictive! It’s an opiate fix!
So what does that make you, Robert? Are you a meta-crackhead, since your interest is in an analysis of TV?
Sam – I think you are correct. When people aren’t getting enough, they get frustrated and turn on the TV. Networks respond to their needs by putting more sex in programming.
Kara – Sex is primal instinctual satisfaction. True there are many other things in life that contribute to happiness, but sex trumps them all. It is typically those who aren’t getting enough GOOD sex that claim it isn’t that important. Don’t take that as a personal attack, it is just my general opinion.
meta-crackhead sounds about right
I have definitely watched much more TV as a result of this website, particularly scripted shows. From 2002-2007 other than a very few shows (Sopranos and Entourage come to mind) I watched almost no television that wasn’t sports-related.
In response to this study I am launching a new blog called sexbythenumbers.com
In it, I will track my sexual activity with advanced statistics.
Don’t worry. Current trends suggest the posts will be infrequent.
damn the man. I’d like the help out, but current trends suggest that I won’t be able to help out much with guest posts.