“I wish real life was a musical,” I lamented to my brother, who proceeded to look at me like I’d sprouted another head.
“How is that indicative of reality at all? Life isn’t scripted,” he responded, ever rational.
As much as I love breaking out into song, I couldn’t help agreeing with him after mulling over his comment. TV does indeed give us unrealistic expectations of reality. In the same way no one at the grocery store or the library will randomly break into song and dance through fields (sorry—I love you, “Sound of Music”), there is no such thing as TV romance and drama in real life.
Countless studies have focused on the effects of TV and media on our emotional, psychological and intellectual development and well-being, by examining whether excessive exposure contributes to violence and decreased attention spans and affects cognitive thinking. But there has not been as much of an emphasis on TV’s effects on relationships.
A recent study by Michigan’s Albion College found romantic relationships could be strained if either or both of the individuals are avid TV viewers. The study found a correlation between an individual’s belief in the way romance is portrayed on TV and his or her lack of commitment to the relationship.
They also found a correlation between the individual’s belief in the TV portrayals and their dissatisfaction with their own relationships in terms of what the study called “loss of personal freedom, loss of time or their partner’s unattractive qualities.”
Jeremy Osborn, author of the Albion College study, said, “My hope would be that people would read this article and take a look at their own relationships and the relationships of those around them.
How realistic are your expectations for your partner and where did those expectations come from?”
According to The New York Times, many adults clock an average of 8.5 hours a day spent in front of some sort of screen. Of those eight hours, the average American watches five hours and nine minutes of TV.
All these images of relationships from the media, both television and the Internet, give us false expectations.
Rest assured, however, that “A Walk to Remember” and “The Notebook” are not a reflection of reality.
This sounds obvious, but America’s high divorce rate would suggest a lack of awareness on the effects of TV on our relationships.
Intellectually, we know that TV, including and especially “reality” TV, is ridiculously unrealistic, but that’s not to say that hours on end of exposure to fiction and fantasy does not have an effect on us.
From how to find and woo a significant other, to how to act in a friendship, to what “happily ever after” looks like, TV skews our expectations of reality.
