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  Figure 53: Generational Succession Explains the Demise of Newspapers

  of people born before 1930 say “definitely” or “generally” yes. Among the generation of their children and grandchildren (born after 1960) news interest is barely half as great. Moreover, figure 54 shows absolutely no evidence of a life cycle growth in news interest among the younger generations that might eventually bring them to the level of their parents and grandparents.

  Since watching the news and reading the news are both elements in the same syndrome, it is hardly surprising that TV news viewing is positively associated with civic involvement. Those of us who rely solely on TV news are not quite as civic in our behavior as our fellow citizens who rely on newspapers, but we news watchers are nevertheless more civic than most other Americans. Regular viewers of network newscasts (as well as followers of National Public Radio and even of the local TV news) spend more time on community projects, attend more club meetings, and follow politics much more closely than other Americans (even when matched in terms of age, education, sex, income, and so on). Americans who follow news on television (compared with those who don’t) are more knowledgeable about public affairs, vote more regularly, and are generally more active in community affairs, though they are not quite as distinctively civic as newspaper readers.8

  Unfortunately, like news readership, news viewership is on the decline, as we would predict from figure 54. In recent years the falloff in the audience for network news has been even faster than the decline in newspaper circulation:

  Figure 54: Newshounds Are a Vanishing Breed

  for example, the regular audience for nightly network news plunged from 60 percent of adults in 1993 to 38 percent in 1998. Moreover, as with newspaper circulation, much of the decline in television news viewing is driven by generational differences. The audience for network news is aging rapidly, as one might easily guess from the health aid advertising that supports Brokaw, Jennings, and Rather. According to a 1997 study by NBC News, while the average age of the audience for all prime-time programs was forty-two, the average age of the audience for nightly newscasts was fifty-seven. Moreover, newscast viewers nowadays are poised to switch away at a moment’s notice: half of all Americans report that they watch the news with a remote control in hand.9

  Some see hope in the rise of news on the Internet or the all-news cable channels. It is still too early to predict the long-run effects of these new channels. That said, the early returns are not encouraging. First, just as TV news-hounds are disproportionately newspaper readers, most people who follow news on the Internet or on all-news cable channels also are “generalists” in their news consumption. CNN viewers, for example, are twice as likely as other Americans to watch the evening network newscasts. Even enthusiasts for Internet news concede that “the Internet is emerging as a supplement to—not a substitute for—other traditional news sources.” In fact, as usage of the Internet expanded in the second half of the 1900s, usage of it to follow public affairs became relatively less important.10 In short, the newer media are mainly drawing on the steadily shrinking traditional audience for news, not expanding it.

  Moreover, unlike those who rely on newspapers, radio, and television for news, those few technologically proficient Americans who rely primarily on the Internet for news are actually less likely than their fellow citizens to be civically involved.11 Of course, this does not prove that the Net is socially demobilizing. These “early adopters” of Internet news may well have been socially withdrawn to begin with. Nevertheless, Internet and cable news outlets seem unlikely to offset the civic losses from the shrinking audiences for network broadcast and print news.

  MOST OF THE TIME, energy, and creativity of the electronic media, however, is devoted not to news, but to entertainment. Watching the news is not harmful to your civic health. What about television entertainment? Here we must begin with the most fundamental fact about the impact of television on Americans: Nothing else in the twentieth century so rapidly and profoundly affected our leisure.

  In 1950 barely 10 percent of American homes had television sets, but by 1959, 90 percent did, probably the fastest diffusion of a technological innovation ever recorded. (The spread of Internet access will rival TV’s record but probably not surpass it.) The reverberations from this lightning bolt continued unabated for decades, as per capita viewing hours grew by 17–20 percent during the 1960s, by an additional 7–8 percent during the 1970s, and by another 7–8 percent from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. (For one measure of this steady growth, see the Nielsen ratings for household viewing hours in figure 55.) In the early years TV watching was concentrated among the less educated sectors of the population, but during the 1970s the viewing time of the more educated sectors of the population began to converge upward. Television viewing increases with age, particularly upon retirement, but each generation since the introduction of television has begun its life cycle at a higher starting point. Partly because of these generational differences, the fraction of American adults who watch “whatever’s on”—that is, those of us who turn on the TV with no particular program in mind—jumped from 29 percent in 1979 to 43 percent by the end of the 1980s. By 1995 viewing per TV household was more than 50 percent higher than it had been in the 1950s.12

  Most studies estimate that the average American now watches roughly four hours per day, very nearly the highest viewership anywhere in the world. Time researchers John Robinson and Geoffrey Godbey, using the more conservative time diary technique for determining how people allocate their time, offer an estimate closer to three hours per day but conclude that as a primary activity, television absorbed almost 40 percent of the average American’s free time in 1995, an increase of roughly one-third since 1965. Between 1965 and 1995 we gained an average of six hours a week in added leisure time, and we

  Figure 55: A Half Century’s Growth in Television Watching, 1950–1998

  spent almost all six of those additional hours watching TV. In short, as Robinson and Godbey conclude, “Television is the 800-pound gorilla of leisure time.”13

  Moreover, multiple sets per household have proliferated: by the late 1990s three-quarters of all U.S. homes had more than one set, allowing ever more private viewing. The fraction of sixth-graders with a TV set in their bedroom grew from 6 percent in 1970 to 77 percent in 1999. (Two kids in three aged 8–18 say that TV is usually on during meals in their home.) At the same time, during the 1980s the rapid diffusion of videocassette players and video games into American households added yet other forms of “screen time.” Finally, during the 1990s personal computers and Internet access dramatically broadened the types of information and entertainment brought into the American home.14 (Some of these trends are captured in figure 56.)

  The single most important consequence of the television revolution has been to bring us home. As early as 1982, a survey by Scripps-Howard reported that eight out of the ten most popular leisure activities were typically based at home. Amid all the declining graphs for social and community involvement traced in the DDB Needham Life Style surveys from 1975 to 1999, one line stands out: The number of Americans who reported a preference for “spending a quiet evening at home” rose steadily. Not surprisingly, those who said so were heavily dependent on televised entertainment.15 While early enthusiasts for this

  Figure 56: Screens Proliferate in American Homes: VCRs, PCs, Extra TV Sets, and the Net, 1970–1999

  new medium spoke eagerly of television as an “electronic hearth” that would foster family togetherness, the experience of the last half century is cautionary.

  Social critic James Howard Kuntsler’s polemic is not far off target:

  The American house has been TV-centered for three generations. It is the focus of family life, and the life of the house correspondingly turns inward, away from whatever occurs beyond its four walls. (TV rooms are called “family rooms” in builders’ lingo. A friend who is an architect explained to me: “People don’t want to admit that what the family doe
s together is watch TV.”) At the same time, the television is the family’s chief connection with the outside world. The physical envelope of the house itself no longer connects their lives to the outside in any active way; rather, it seals them off from it. The outside world has become an abstraction filtered through television, just as the weather is an abstraction filtered through air conditioning.16

  Time diaries show that husbands and wives spend three or four times as much time watching television together as they spend talking to each other, and six to seven times as much as they spend in community activities outside the home. Moreover, as the number of TV sets per household multiplies, even watching together becomes rarer. More and more of our television viewing is done entirely alone. At least half of all Americans usually watch by themselves, one study suggests, while according to another, one-third of all television viewing is done alone. Among children aged 8–18 the figures are even more startling: less than 5 percent of their TV-watching is done with their parents, and more than one-third is done entirely alone.17

  Television viewing has steadily become a more habitual, less intentional part of our lives. Four times between 1979 and 1993 the Roper polling organization posed a revealing pair of questions to Americans:

  When you turn the television set on, do you usually turn it on first and then look for something you want to watch, or do you usually turn it on only if you know there’s a certain program you want to see?

  Some people like to have a TV set on, sort of in the background, even when they’re not actually watching it. Do you find you frequently will just have the set on even though you’re not really watching it, or [do you either watch it or turn it off]?

  Selective viewers (that is, those who turn on the television only to see a specific program and turn it off when they’re not watching) are significantly more involved in community life than habitual viewers (those who turn the TV on without regard to what’s on and leave it on in the background), even controlling for education and other demographic factors. For example, selective viewers are 23 percent more active in grassroots organizations and 33 percent more likely to attend public meetings than other demographically matched Americans. Habitual viewing is especially detrimental to civic engagement. Indeed, the effect of habitual viewing on civic disengagement is as great as the effect of simply watching more TV.18

  Year by year we have become more likely to flick on the tube without knowing what we want to see and more likely to leave it on in the background even when we’re no longer watching, as figure 57 shows. As recently as the late 1970s selective viewers outnumbered habitual viewers by more than three to two, but by the mid-1990s the proportions were reversed. In 1962, only a few years after television had become nearly ubiquitous, the leading character in The Manchurian Candidate could say, “There are two kinds of people in the world—those who walk into a room and turn the TV on, and those who walk into a room and turn the TV off.”19 Four decades later the first kind of people have become more common and the second kind ever rarer.

  Habituation to omnipresent television is much more pervasive among younger generations. (Keep in mind in this discussion that “younger” can include people in their forties at the turn of this century.) Even highly educated members of younger generations are much less likely to be selective viewers than less educated people from earlier generations. Of Americans born before 1933 (none of whom grew up with TV), 43 percent were selective viewers in 1993, roughly twice the rate of selective viewing (23 percent) that year among people born after 1963 (all of whom grew up with TV). Those of us who have

  Figure 57: TV Becomes an American Habit, as Selective Viewing Declines

  grown up in the television age are more much likely than our elders to consider TV a natural constant companion. This is precisely what we should expect if TV watching is a habit acquired most easily in childhood. In short, even when total TV hours are the same across different age groups—as they often are—different generations use television differently. Since the trend toward habitual TV watching mostly reflects the effects of generational succession, it is unlikely to be reversed any time soon.20

  Habitual viewing is not the only way in which generations differ in their television-viewing customs. Another is channel surfing. Figure 58, drawn from a 1996 Yankelovich Monitor survey, shows that when they are actually watching TV, younger generations (including boomers, compared with their elders) are more likely to surf from program to program, “grazing” or “multitasking” rather than simply following a single narrative. Other scholars have found that compared with teenagers in the 1950s, young people in the 1990s have fewer, weaker, and more fluid friendships.21 Although I know no systematic evidence that supports this hunch, I suspect that the link between channel surfing and social surfing is more than metaphorical.

  The ubiquity of television in our lives can best by conveyed by examining what proportion of Americans report TV viewing in various slices of time throughout the day. The DDB Needham Life Style surveys from 1993 to 1998 asked respondents to indicate whether or not they had been watching TV during

  Figure 58: Channel Surfing Is More Common Among Younger Generations

  ten different periods throughout the previous day—from waking up in the morning to going to bed at night. During each period when they reported watching, they were asked whether this was mainly for information, mainly for entertainment, or “just for background.” Figure 59 charts the national averages.

  During every period of the day at least one-quarter of all adults report some TV viewing. After work this fraction rises to more than half, peaking at 86 percent during the aptly named “prime time” hours.22 In many homes television is merely on in the background, a kind of visual Muzak, but figure 59 shows that such casual usage accounts for a relatively small fraction of reported viewership. These averages include both working and nonworking Americans, though obviously the figures for workers are lower during the workday. Roughly half of all Americans—married and single, parents and childless—repot watching television while eating dinner, and nearly one-third do so during breakfast and lunch.23 By the end of the twentieth century television had become omnipresent in Americans’ lives.

  Another way of seeing the dominance of television viewing in Americans’ lives is to compare it with other ways in which we spend our evenings. Figure 60 shows that 81 percent of all Americans report that most evenings they watch TV, as compared with only 56 percent who talk with family members, 36 percent who have a snack, 27 percent who do household chores, and 7 percent

  Figure 59: America Watches TV All Day Every Day

  Figure 60: In the Evening Americans, Above All, Watch TV

  who walk the dog. Watching TV at night has become one of the few universals of contemporary American life.24

  THIS MASSIVE CHANGE in the way Americans spend our days and nights occurred precisely during the years of generational civic disengagement. How is television viewing related to civic engagement? In a correlational sense, the answer is simple: More television watching means less of virtually every form of civic participation and social involvement. Television viewing is also correlated with other factors that depress civic involvement, including poverty, old age, low education, and so on. Thus in order to isolate the specific connection between television and social participation, we need to hold those other factors constant, statistically speaking. Other things being equal, such analysis suggests, each additional hour of television viewing per day means roughly a 10 percent reduction in most forms of civic activism—fewer public meetings, fewer local committee members, fewer letters to Congress, and so on.25

  If the time diary estimates are correct that Americans spent nearly an hour more per day in front of the tube in 1995 than in 1965, then that factor alone might account for perhaps one-quarter of the entire drop in civic engagement over this period.26 I must, however, add two qualifications to this estimate, one that might bias it upward and one that might bias it downward. On the one hand, I have as ye
t offered no evidence that the causal arrow runs from TV watching to civic disengagement rather than the reverse. On the other hand, this estimate presumes that the only effect of TV on civic engagement comes from the number of hours watched, rather than something about the character of the watching, the watcher, and the watched.

  Before we turn to these important subtleties, figure 61 presents some of the evidence linking TV watching and civic disengagement. In order to screen out the effects of life cycle and education, we confine our attention here to working-age, college-educated Americans. (The pattern is even more marked within other, more TV-dependent segments of the population, such as retired people or the less well educated.) In this group those who watch an hour or less of television per day are half again as active civically as those who watch three hours or more a day. For example, 39 percent of the light viewers attended some public meeting on town or school affairs last year, as compared with only 25 percent of the demographically matched heavy viewers. Of the light viewers, 28 percent wrote Congress last year, compared with 21 percent of the heavy viewers. Of light viewers, 29 percent played a leadership role in some local organization, as contrasted with only 18 percent of heavy viewers. Light viewers were nearly three times more likely to have made a speech last year than were equally well-educated heavy viewers (14 percent to 5 percent).

  The significance of these differences between heavy and light viewers is magnified by the fact that even among this select group of well-educated, working-age Americans, heavy viewers outnumber light viewers by nearly two to one. A major commitment to television viewing—such as most of us have come to have—is incompatible with a major commitment to community life.