Television: your only friend

Have you ever thought that your favorite television characters were your only real friends?

Maybe you are socially awkward or easily immersed in fictional worlds, but sometimes it feels like Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen or Barney Stinson are the only ones who really understand the complexities of your inner psyche.

You are not alone.

According to a series of studies done by researchers at the University of Buffalo and Miami University of Ohio, watching television does actually make viewers feel less alone, or at least provides the illusion of such.

Among the studies’ findings were that viewers felt less lonely when viewing their favorite program and felt even better when they could write blog posts or essays about that show and its characters. Additionally, viewing, thinking and writing about their favorite program helped people combat low self-esteem and feelings of rejection. 
Hopefully these studies will push the boundaries of the old, negative opinions of television because critics, scholars and the general population have been giving it a bad wrap for way too long.

Sure, people should not spend 12 hours a day watching dredge like “Tool Academy” or FOX’s reality lineup and should strongly consider having real friends they can interact with regularly instead of relying solely on fictional representations.

But television will not rot your brain. It probably will not make you more violent. And as the findings of this study show, feeling strongly connected to the people on it is both common and OK.

It is weird to think that in common culture, it is okay to curl up with a book for the evening but spending it watching high-quality television has yet to be held in the same regard. No one intelligent questions their peers when they mention getting wrapped up in the characters of a great novel. The same agency should be applied to television characters.

Again, that is not to say television can fill all voids in people’s lives, but to look down upon those who do use it is no longer necessary. If writing a 1,000 word diatribe about the DHARMA Initiative’s plan to exploit the characteristics of the island on “Lost” makes someone happy, or even more, keeps them from ending their life, why should they feel ashamed of that?

It might not be the best way to keep happiness levels high, but as the study notes, “we have endeavored to take seriously the hypothesis that seemingly asocial human technologies, such as television, can actually serve a social function.”

This is yet another step in the process to getting skeptics to see that television is not the devil. There are some television programs that unspool better than most novels (“The Wire,” for instance), providing cultural significance and commentary that other mediums cannot. Others, such as Steven Johnson of The New York Times, say they believe watching television can make you smarter. 

So why don’t most people understand me when I say things like this? I feel like only Michael Scott really gets me.