What Happy People Don't Do

Could it be because watching tv constantly leaves us comparing our selves and our lives to impossible standards?

clipped from www.nytimes.com Happy people spend a lot of time socializing, going to church and reading newspapers — but they don’t spend a lot of time watching television, a new study finds. That’s what unhappy people do. Although people who describe themselves as happy enjoy watching television, it turns out to be the single activity they engage in less often than unhappy people, said John Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland and the author of the study, which appeared in the journal Social Indicators Research. But the researchers could not tell whether unhappy people watch more television or whether being glued to the set is what makes people unhappy. “I don’t know that turning off the TV will make you more happy,” Dr. Robinson said. Still, he said, the data show that people who spend the most time watching television are least happy in the long run.