How Different Types of Media Can Affect Life Satisfaction
It’s move-in day to your freshman dorm at the University of Maryland. You’re super excited because it’s spring semester so you’re finally going to make up for those moments you missed during the fall. A few weeks into your freedom, the COVID-19 pandemic hits. You’re distraught; you thought this was going to be the beginning of your new life. Now that school is virtual, you spend a lot of time with your roommate, Joe. Joe listens to a lot of EDM, so you begin to follow suit. Soon life just seems more enjoyable, simply because there’s more EDM in your life. Does this seem like this could happen to you? Well, Dr. Krause & her colleagues proved exactly that (minus the EDM). These researchers came together during the early stages of the pandemic to investigate how different types of media (including TV & movies) impact life satisfaction among university students.
Though we hate to admit it, COVID-19 changed everything: it changed lives, relationships, bank accounts, you name it. One interesting switch was how people interacted with the media, such as how they listened to music for example. Since media consumption has become a part of everyday life and COVID has become our reality, society is bound to change the way it interacts with media as there seems to be no visible end for COVID. Many youths spend more time with media than any other activity, only second to sleeping. For example, the average American, between the ages of 8 and 18, uses media for over six hours a day (I don’t even sleep for that long sometimes!).
In 2021, Dr. Krause & her teammates performed a study with university students in Queensland, Australia. If you didn’t know, Queensland is home to the Great Barrier Reef along with five other Australian World Natural Heritage Areas. Since this location has many beautiful natural locations that are accessible during COVID, I wonder if this population starts off at an elevated baseline of “happy” than, for example, people that live in New York, where it’s tougher to enjoy the outdoors during COVID.
Participants in the study completed six surveys, each separated by two weeks. The first survey was given when the government was implementing the most severe COVID restrictions, around April 2020. The last survey was completed in mid-July 2020, corresponding with the reopening of state borders and the recommencement of children’s sports. This study makes me speculate how accurately peoples’ mindsets during COVID lockdown are portrayed since Australia was a country that lifted its COVID restrictions fairly early compared to the majority of other countries around the world.
The attrition rate of the study was very high: out of all the participants in the study, only 25% finished all six surveys and only 20% finished five. I wish there was a way to measure the responses of the people that dropped out because maybe the most motivated individuals, who were therefore possibly the most satisfied with life, were the ones who remained in the study. The results, on the other hand, were (thankfully) much more exciting than the attrition rate.
The data shows that life satisfaction was higher than typical when individuals increased their time spent listening to music. Interestingly, when people watched more TV & movies than usual, they reported lower life satisfaction. I wonder what about music specifically makes people happier, whereas TV & movies don’t satisfy the same requirements anymore. TV & movies used to be just as exciting as music to society at one point. Elon University Contributors note that after the advent of television in the 1920s, about 8,000 households had TVs in 1946; this number jumped to 45.7 million by 1960. Although Statista points out that 122.4 million households (about triple the number from 1960) have TVs in 2022, Nielsen Contributors found that Americans are more likely to actively choose to listen to music rather than watch TV. Music also doesn’t require the same attention span that TV does, making it easier to enjoy music while multitasking, for instance.
Do you think music will also fizzle out the way TV & movies are? TV was created in the 1920s, however music’s creation dates back to at least 35,000 years ago, according to the Smithsonian. The craze behind TV & movies dissipating makes sense in a way, as the Silent Generation (born in the 1920s-1940s) & Baby Boomers (born during Post World War II) grow older. However, music has been ingrained within society for generations, possibly explaining why it’s less likely to fade away.
It’s not only during the pandemic — many studies quote that music makes people feel happier in general. Dr. McCrary & his colleagues rave about how there’s increasing evidence that shows music can promote the well-being and health-related quality of life of individuals. Different aspects of music make people happy which is what makes music so unique; music is cultural, religious, and familial. It could be quite possible that the conclusions of Dr. Krause & her colleagues were accurate, proving that people listen to music and find later that they’re happier; however, it could be equally likely that people feeling good about life are more prone to listening to music which puts them in an even better mood, or maybe that people simply have a tremendous pre-existing mood which the music they listen to doesn’t really improve at all.
Imagine it’s freshman year spring semester again, but this time a few days after COVID officially hit. It’s a Friday and the weather outside is absolutely gorgeous for the first time in weeks. One of your roommate’s favorite EDM songs begins to play, so he blasts it. You’re so giddy that you realize this is one of your favorite moments of the semester so far. Now, is this because of the weather or the music? Distinguishing what improves life satisfaction is hard, but this is exactly what Dr. Krause & her teammates were able to accomplish. In our next blog post we’ll replicate this study and see if we’re also able to find the same results — see you then!
References
Elon University Contributors. (2016). 1920s — 1960s: Television. Elon University. Retrieved May 13, 2022, from https://www.elon.edu/u/imagining/time-capsule/150-years/back-1920-1960/
Krause, A. E. (2021). Music Listening Predicted Improved Life Satisfaction in University Students During Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Frontiers. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.631033/full#F2
McCrary, J. M., PhD. (2022, March 22). Association of Music Interventions With Health-Related Quality of Life: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Complementary and Alternative Medicine | JAMA Network Open | JAMA Network. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2790186
Nielsen Contributors. (2015, January 22). Everyone Listens to Music, But How We Listen is Changing. Nielsen. https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2015/everyone-listens-to-music-but-how-we-listen-is-changing/
Rogers, K. C. (2019, October 29). US teens use screens more than seven hours a day on average. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/29/health/common-sense-kids-media-use-report-wellness/index.html
Smithsonian Contributors. (2020, October 27). Art & Music. The Smithsonian Institution’s Human Origins Program. Retrieved May 13, 2022, from https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/behavior/art-music#:%7E:text=Making%20music%20is%20a%20universal,the%20world’s%20earliest%20musical%20instruments.
Statista. (2022, March 8). Number of TV households in the U.S. 2000–2020. https://www.statista.com/statistics/243789/number-of-tv-households-in-the-us/#:%7E:text=According%20to%20estimates%2C%20there%20are,the%202021%2D2022%20TV%20season.
