A World without TV?

In Peter Hitchens’ excellent book The Abolition of Britain, he quotes a letter from T.S. Eliot to the Times of London warning against the uptake of television in the United Kingdom. Eliot’s letter, published in 1950, reads, in part:

…I have just returned from a visit to the United States…Among persons of my own acquaintance I found only anxiety amd apprehension about the social effects of this pastime [television], especially about its effect (mentally , morally and physically) upon small children….The fears expressed by my American friends were not such as could be allayed by the provision of only superior and harmless programmes: they were concerned with the television habit, whatever the programme might be.

Naturally, we will never really know what society might have looked like were the “television habit”, as Eliot calls it, to have been avoided. However, an interesting paper, published this month, by Harvard University’s Benjamin Olken offers some possible insight into the effect that television can have on a community.

In Do Television and Radio Destroy Social Capital? Evidence from Indonesian Villages [PDF], Olken examines the effect of television on Indonesian villages: seeking to identify whether there is a correlation between exposure to the mass media and a decline in social capital. Using topographical data on East and Central Java, he was able to determine the signal strength in each village and examine whether this, firstly, led to more time being spent watching television or listening to radio; and, secondly, whether there was any discernable downturn in participation in village social and political activities.

Olken found that better television reception led to less participation in social activities. On average, each additional channel correlated with seven percent less social groups in that village and with each adult attending 11 percent less gatherings. He also found a similar effect on participation in community development activities and, most significantly, the level of trust in that community.