TV, Time, and Happiness

Abstract

Watching television, and more generally media consumption, is a dominant activity in most persons’ lives. Europeans spend on average over ç hours a day in front of the TV and US Americans even about 5 hours. We present empirical research on media use by Europeans, which suggests that watching TV is related to less happiness. Listening to the radio, and even more reading newspapers, is on the other hand related to higher life satisfaction. The causal relationships between media consumption and happiness have been analyzed for TV but need to be explored for the case of radio and newspapers.