From time to time, you hear bemoaning about how we’re becoming less social in this country. One well-known example is Robert Putnam’s book from 2000 Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, which argues that a strong democracy requires strong communities.
On a lesser note, you might run across comments like these made in Jason Fry’s Real Time column on WSJ.com.
Today my TV is not your TV, and you can never assume the same people are watching the same thing at the same time or in the same way.
Fry mostly attributes this to DVRs, but you could also point to DVDs, iTunes, BitTorrent, streaming online video, and so on. You can watch what you want, when you want, but you have to be careful. The next morning at work, you can’t assume all your co-workers saw that episode. All the members of your household may watch the same show, but not together in the same room at the same time.
But then I thought about this a little more and I realized that this period of mass media consumption — a nation united together in watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan — really hasn’t been around forever. Radio and then television broadcasts allowed us to consume media together in the 20th century, but that behavior didn’t exist before that (with the exception of live theater). The printing press came in the mid 15th century. Paperbacks came in the 19th century. Broadcast media brought us together, but not by choice. We all watched the same TV shows at the same time, but this was because it was only on once a week. Large numbers of viewers saw that same choice, because there were so few viewing options.
So, we’re not going out to the movies as much in groups and we’re not bowling with our friends and neighbors as much. But we didn’t have the option of doing otherwise before. If you could have hooked up an Xbox in 1954, would you have still chosen to go bowling? Maybe so, maybe not.
But in place of consuming together, you can now connect online with other fans of your favorite shows. You all watch separately, then come together online to discuss, critique and analyze. It’s not the same kind of community, but it’s some kind.
Tags: TV, Bowling Alone, DVR, Jason Fry