Republished from Mercola.com.
Dr. Schor from Harvard University wrote the book The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need
which provides some marvelous insights on television watching. She conducted a large-scale study of American spending and saving habits and correlated the results with other lifestyle factors.
She concluded that for every hour of television a person watches per week, the average American spends $200. Sitting in front of the television five extra hours a week (two sitcoms a night) raises your yearly spending by about $1000.
Indebtedness as an outgrowth of TV watching arises not so much from viewers repeated exposure to advertising, but from their attempts to emulate the lavish lifestyles enjoyed by fictional characters in soap operas and prime-time television dramas. The more television people watch the more they tend to believe that ordinary citizens have servants, limousines, and huge houses.
TV will show 24 year old waitresses with expansive lofts and exotic sports cars, not ratty one-room apartments and battered Geo Metros. In addition, folks who watch a lot of TV are more willing to go into debt in pursuit of what they believe is an accurate depiction of normal life. Consumers rack up heavy credit-card debt chasing the televised fantasy or in academic jargon “engage in competitive consumption for the purpose of image management.”
Contrary to popular conceptions, Dr. Schor found a positive correlation with higher education and indebtedness. The further people have climbed up the educations ladder, the less likely the are to save money.
The heaviest shoppers are women with graduate degrees, which may be attributed to their heightened awareness of the trappings of social status.
Those most likely to live within their means and save money are the millionaires next door, folks with less formal education who have worked hard building their own businesses. Not surprisingly, the more successful people are with their own businesses the less time they have for watching TV.
Kids are by far the most voracious viewers, A report in a recent JAMA claims that children in the US watch 15,000 to 18,000 hours of television between he ages of 2 and 17 as compared to 12,000 hours of school.
Many medical studies have correlated excessive TV viewing with childhood obesity and adult depression. Certain crime statistics also correlate well with the market penetration of television, larceny and burglary both increased as a corresponding rate following TV’s rise in popularity in the 1950s.
Wow. Thanks for posting this. I couldn’t agree more.
Dr Juliet Schor’s more recent book, “Born to Buy: A Groundbreaking Exposé of a Marketing Culture That Makes Children “Believe They Are What They Own” is a must read along with “The Overspent American” and “The Overworked American”, two of her other books.
Her work is brilliant- and an interesting, engaging read.
BTW believe she is now at Boston University, was formerly at Harvard.
I think that when we watch TV, we don’t have a life.. but watching other peoples’ makes us want to do something with ours… and shopping is the easiest way to get fresh stimuli. No eating is the easiest, but shopping is a close second.
I don’t watch much TV, maybe 3 hours a week. But the three years we were without TV we racked up the worst debt of our lives. Go figure.
I spend MUCH more time on the computer than ‘watching’ TV – but the TV is recording, so we can quickly go through what we want to see, avoiding commercials and news that we have already seen.
But, then again, we are retired, have no debt (own our house, cars, boat, and trailers), and a nice nest egg that was put away during the years that we worked AND watched TV. ….
Oh, yeh, and we both have graduate degrees: His PhD (engineering), mine EDS (counseling psychology).
Then, just before retiring, we bought and ran an antique furniture repair and restoration business for a few years.
correlation != causation
Not necessarily, at least.
This is very interesting and it’s taken me awhile to correlate it to my own experience. We don’t watch much TV, or so I thought, until I thought of the documentaries, sport events, a few prime time shows…much of which is taped and not necessarily watched, but much of it, of course, is watched.
I know when I first watched the sitcom Friends I had lived through my twenties and knew that that lifestyle was totally unbelievable. My first apartment was a rather shabby but mostly clean two bedroom I shared with a friend and any cast off furniture etc that we could get from our parents. We were students but had our finances given way, we couldn’t even have afforded that place.
I think when we moved here and suddenly were not living paycheck to paycheck, it was easy to go a little wild and spend more than we should have. Fortunately, I finally remembered that this wasn’t meant to be spent on things of long term value (education, retirement) and backed off.
It;s funny though; we didn’t have much money growing up and there were 4 of us, so hand me downs were everything from clothes to toys. However, my parents were over one day when my then two year old son briefly looked up from a box he was playing with, and laughed at a “Happy Hippos” game. The next day my father called me at 10 to say he and my mom would be over at 10 to take us to the mall to buy the game! I guess it’s part of grandparent’s rights to spoil their grandchild but it was such a shock to us.
Christine
Ha! Don’t even get me started about “grandparent’s rights”! Where did that idea come from?
Certainly, in most cases, it’s not worth arguing with loved ones about, but the word “spoil”, if I understand it right, means to cause something to become rotten. ?!?!? Why would anybody WANT to do that to the children of their own beloved children?
I’m sure it’s born out of love, but I do wish that collectively we’d get over that mindset.
I have to agree with Rebecca. Although I don’t know what a “Happy Hippos” game is, I would like to think that Christine has every ‘right’ to say “Thanks for the thought, Dad; let’s wait a while.” She might even want to go as far as to suggest they look up the company and buy stock in it instead; or do what a GRANDparent in our family did and start an education savings fund:-))
Ideas are endless. Communication is essential. Maybe Mom and Dad would like suggestions as to what IS wanted/needed every now and again.
I should have explained that this is a problem of the past. After this incident, we sat down with both sets of grandparents and explained that what our son needed most was time, not objects.
Everyone meant well, and a first grandchild allowed them to give him what they had not been able to give us. However, they complied with our wishes. My parents also did start a savings fund for my son.
My son knew he could accept gifts however, and after we stopped the major gifting, he would say Grandpa gave him paper. (My mother died not long after the Happy Hippo incident). We thought he was getting drawings from Grandpa, as my father was a talented artist.
Imagine my surprise when I was cleaning one day and in my son’s “treasure box” were a very small number of $50 bills. Those were Grandpa’s paper gifts.
We had to laugh at that one. At that age, my son had no idea they were even valuable. Into the savings account they went!
Christine
TV is a carrier system for advertising, Emily. If TV did not work as an effective medium for advertising, it would function like theatre, a cultural event offered intermittently for those who can afford a costly ticket, or as a government-subsidized artistic endeavour.
Well put, Duchesse, I agree.
The article states: “Indebtedness as an outgrowth of TV watching arises not so much from viewers repeated exposure to advertising, but from their attempts to emulate the lavish lifestyles enjoyed by fictional characters in soap operas and prime-time television dramas….”. I suppose the lavish lifestyles of fictional characters do involve a great deal of product placement, so that could also be seen as advertising.
Regardless, people have the choice to spend their money or not, whether or not they watch a lot of TV. TV is not to blame for people being irresponsible.
Emily, TV is not “to blame”. However, it is designed, measured and funded on its ability to attract viewers who will watch messages carefully developed to appeal to our desires.. Watching does not compel behaviour, but reinforces it by telling people what they “should” want. If you are bombarded by enough messages of desirability and availability, you very likely start to respond, rather than think. That’s what they intend, the reflexive, desired response to the stimulus.