TV: The Isolation Machine
Posted on November 21st, 2008 at 11:36 am by Steve

Thursday’s New York Times carries an article on research into how happy people spend their time. The results are not surprising:

Happy people spend a lot of time socializing, going to church and reading newspapers — but they don’t spend a lot of time watching television, a new study finds.

That’s what unhappy people do.

Although people who describe themselves as happy enjoy watching television, it turns out to be the single activity they engage in less often than unhappy people, said John Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland and the author of the study, which appeared in the journal Social Indicators Research.