Lonely? Take Two TV Shows and Call Me in the Morning

According to new studies, watching TV can actually make us less lonely and help us deal with feelings of rejection and isolation.

The studies conducted by the University at Buffalo and Miami University of Ohio, and reported in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology suggest that watching TV provides viewers with the illusion that their social needs are being met.

And not just TV. The studies also argue that the same can be said of movies, music, video games, and the internet.

“The research provides evidence for the ‘social surrogacy hypothesis,’ which holds that humans can use technologies, like television, to provide the experience of belonging when no real belongingness has been experienced,” Shira Gabriel, one of the study’s authors said.

The first study found that subjects felt less lonely when viewing their favorite TV shows. The second study found that subjects whose “belongingness needs were aroused” wrote longer essays about their favored TV programs. The third study found that thinking about favored TV programs buffered subjects against drops in self-esteem, increases in negative mood and feelings of rejection. And Study four found that subjects verbally expressed fewer feelings of loneliness after writing essays about their preferred TV programs.

This study reminds me of something C.S. Lewis once said—“We read to know that we’re not alone.”

As a solitary, sometimes lonely person, who reads books and watches movies and TV shows then writes about them, I find the study fascinating and true, but I think something far deeper is at work—something the study doesn’t seem to consider.

Far more than mere distraction, stories—whether they are told, written, performed, or filmed—give meaning to our lives. As humans, we need myths, stories, dreams—the hero’s journey to identify with.

The best stories don’t just entertain. They inspire. They instruct. They empathize with our existential angst, and in the process, teach us empathy for others.

Stories are mirrors we hold up to ourselves. They are lamps to our feet and lights to our paths.

When we read or watch, we know we’re not alone, but not because we’re momentarily distracted. We know we’re not alone because another human being is reaching out to us, making contact with us on our most essential human level. The act of writing, of creating stories, is the solitary, often lonely act of attempting to express humanness, to bring order to the chaos, to find meaning in the madness, to truly and profoundly connect to other, often solitary, lonely human beings.

That someone is driven to sit by himself or herself and tell stories, that publishers or craftspeople help bring them to life, that actors will lose themselves in becoming that “fictional” character, lets us know we’re not alone, lets us know that our deep need to hear stories is only exceeded by other human beings’ deeper need to tell them. It’s communal. It’s connection. Yet it’s intimate and personal.

And what of where stories come from? As a storyteller, I can tell you, they come from beyond us, from the ineffable, transcendent, mysterious—from the place where communication can only be story and poetry, myth and metaphor. And this is a big part of why stories make us feel less lonely.

Of course, all stories are not created equal. Much of what is on TV is shallow, sentimental, and, far too often, mind-numbing. The better the story, the more skilled and sophisticated the storyteller, the more beneficial for us the story is.

Myths are how we define and understand ourselves and others—the myths of our religions, philosophies, families, communities, nationalities. Everything we know or think we do comes down to us through the stories we hear and believe.

In common culture, myth is used for something that’s not true, but nothing could be further from the truth. Myths are true—perhaps not factually, actually, literally-happened-just-that-way true, but true at profoundly human and even transcendent levels. Unfortunately, in the West, since the Enlightenment, we’ve over and misapplied logic, reason, and the scientific method to story, and by making did-it-really-happen the sole test for truth, we’re losing our souls (our ability to imagine, explore, empathize, dream, create, transcend—the very best of our humanness).

Every family has myths that are empowering and ones that are imprisoning. Every religion has myths that inspire compassion and ones that ignite hate. Every nation has myths that cultivate civility and ones that cause the cancers of greed and nationalism.

The best stories don’t just help with loneliness, don’t just entertain or distract. They actually transform us in powerful and lasting ways.
But that’s the best stories.

We should be discriminating about the TV we watch (which would lead to us watch very little). We shouldn’t just read commercial fiction or trite self-help books. We shouldn’t just watch the fraction of films that make it to our local cinema house, the blockbusters made to crassly manipulate the masses. We should each read and watch the best we can find, inhabit good stories, for it’s not just our loneliness, but our very humanity that’s at hazard.