Which Comes First?

Here's a headline and lead from LiveScience:

Unhappy People Watch Lots More TV
Jeanna Bryner Senior Writer
livescience.com – Sat Nov 15

Unhappy people glue themselves to the television 30 percent more than happy people.

My immediate response was that the more you watch TV the less happy you will be. Just look at the quality of TV shows- all those reality shows and game-type shows. The least common denominator gets lowered all the time. Ah, but they deal with that:

The researchers are not sure, though, whether unhappiness leads to more television-watching or more viewing leads to unhappiness.

In fact, people say they like watching television: Past research has shown that when people watch television they enjoy it. In these studies, participants reported that on a scale from 0 (dislike) to 10 (greatly enjoy), TV-watching was nearly an 8.

But perhaps the high from watching television doesn't last.

"These conflicting data suggest that TV may provide viewers with short-run pleasure, but at the expense of long-term malaise," said researcher John Robinson, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, College Park.

So, maybe we should try an experiment. Limit the TV and see if we become happier people.

You first.