Television privatizes leisure and thereby erodes community social capital
Evidence
The most obvious and probably the most powerful instrument of this revolution is television. Time-budget studies in the 1960s showed that the growth in time spent watching television dwarfed all other changes in the way Americans passed their days and nights. Television has made our communities (or, rather, what we experience as our communities) wider and shallower. In the language of economics, electronic technology enables individual tastes to be satisfied more fully, but at the cost of the positive social externalities associated with more primitive forms of entertainment. The same logic applies to the replacement of vaudeville by the movies and now of movies by the VCR. The new “virtual reality” helmets that we will soon don to be entertained in total isolation are merely the latest extension of this trend. — Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone, 67
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to Putnam’s own bowling-alone thesis, and the wider ‘Bowling Alone’ theme. — connects to: Television privaatizes leisure even in group settings meant for sociability — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 849; Television adoption reduced community participation across age groups; Television creates a false intimacy that substitutes for real community engagement — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 837 (+5 more)
- SEED: A modern update could trace how streaming and VR have extended this 1990s privatization-of-leisure logic.
- corroborated: 5 independent passages support this claim — Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: America’s Declining…, 67
Related
- Television privaatizes leisure even in group settings meant for sociability (similarity 0.89)
- Television creates a false intimacy that substitutes for real community engagement (similarity 0.84)
- Rising TV viewing correlates with a large decline in civic participation (similarity 0.82)
- Americans replaced social evenings with home-centered solitary leisure (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Television privaatizes leisure even in group settings meant for sociability
#expands(0.90) — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 849 - Television adoption reduced community participation across age groups
#corroborates(0.85) - Rising TV viewing correlates with a large decline in civic participation
#corroborates(0.80) — George Michelsen Foy, Zero Decibels, 448 - Television creates a false intimacy that substitutes for real community engagement
#expands(0.75) — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 837 - Social capital serves harmful as well as beneficial ends
#qualifies(0.70) — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 1099 - Social capital valuable for one activity can harm others.
#qualifies(0.70) — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 40