Thank you. Sleazy, manipulative, trashy. These are all words that have been used to describe one of the most common guilty pleasures of our time, reality television. As a therapist, I have a strong opinion about this. I love reality TV.
Almost 80% of Americans watch reality TV. Some people say it's to relax, that it's simple, mindless entertainment, or that they enjoy the drama of it all. But studies haven't been able to pinpoint one.
main reason why reality TV is so popular. I believe it's because this genre allows us to observe the full range of human experience, all from the comfort of our own living rooms. My work often involves people coming to me at the lowest points of their lives.
They show up lugging a metaphorical backpack full of behaviors that they're ashamed of, expecting my help to get rid of those habits forever. Instead, I often... Sit down with them and take a deep look at what they've been carrying.
It can be incredibly uncomfortable and courageous for my clients to face these difficult situations. But doing so allows them to choose. what to leave behind, and what to keep, which helps them move through life with more insight and ease. I believe at the heart of every guilty pleasure lies wisdom waiting to be unearthed.
earthed. Tapping into that wisdom can help us identify what we want to be. In a world where so many of us are struggling to find connection, a guilty pleasure like reality TV just may hold unique insights from our fellow travelers. My journey with reality TV began like many children of the 90s who were taken by MTV. Yeah.
After school, my mom and my grandmother would come home and watch their stories, which is what the older generation of women in my family called soap operas. My brother and I would sneak upstairs to his TV, turning the volume down low so they wouldn't hear the swear word bleeps. MTV had a groundbreaking show called The Real World, which was about seven strangers who lived and worked together. I was 13 years old when Julie Stauffer took her turn on the real-world season in New Orleans.
She was an active Mormon just like me. She attended Brigham Young University, which meant she was the kind of young woman I looked up to. She was the first Mormon I could remember seeing on television.
I watched with curiosity as she confronted some prejudices of our shared upbringing. I was shocked when she earned some swear word bleeps of her own while she was struggling to communicate with her parents. I felt sad and confused along with her when I heard the news that she wouldn't be allowed to return to BYU. because of living in a co-ed arrangement.
I saw myself in her story even before I had the words to write my own. And I learned that I have a passion for relating to and understanding other people's stories. My connection to the real world may be different than what others get out of reality competition shows or shows about niche topics like Alaskan crab fishing or outbidding strangers on stories. storage units.
Some people are into that. But in all these shows, people are the plot line. We get to see real humans respond to a variety of situations.
It doesn't matter whether it's a world we know or a lifestyle we'll never get to experience. We relish watching other people's lives. Many people watch out of a human curiosity to learn about people and to see themselves reflected in them. One study suggests that our reality TV watching habits allow us to vicariously experience human needs without risk.
We want to see people win because we want to win. We want to see people find love because many of us want to find love. We want to see women yelling scathing accusations at each other in the middle of a winery because, yes, there are times when we want to do those things, when we're struggling to communicate with people. Reality TV is a master class on basic human motivations and how they play out in life. Learning from our own mistakes is wise, but learning from the blunders of others feels a little less risky.
When people ask me how I spend my free time, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I watch reality TV, because I don't want to be the only one. I feel a rush of excitement when other people say they watch it too. Hey, I'm not alone. Sometimes I even encourage clients who are struggling to find friendships to try using reality TV as an entry point into conversation and see what happens.
We use these shared experiences to connect us through easy and difficult times. During the pandemic, many of us were disconnected from water coolers at work. We couldn't interact with our friends and family as often as we wanted. Along with bread making and TikTok dances, binge watching reality TV connected many of us. The things we had in common, like that one celebrity TV host we all have a crush on, helped us to relate to each other.
These commonalities can help us to overcome biases because we see other viewers as being more like us. That, in turn, can help us to engage across barriers. One woman I met told me that she started watching a show about deckhands on a ship with her teenage son. She said having the opportunity to bond each week strengthened their relationship through the challenging times of adolescence. As a therapist, I don't normally advocate increasing TV time for teenagers, but...
In this case, I'll make an exception. Of course, there is a darker side to reality TV and what it can reveal about our behaviors. One study suggests that our interest in the genre relates to the common human need of being better than the person next to us.
Like that smug pleasure you get from seeing someone make a blunder on a hidden camera show and you think, that would never happen to me. This may mean that keeping up with the whoever's may be stoking more genuine envy and comparison than we realize. Studies also show that the genre can influence our behaviors. One survey showed that young girls who watch reality TV are more likely to believe that they have to lie to get what they want, or that gossip and competition are normal parts of relationships.
As we get more savvy about how the media works, we know that TV only reflects a small sliver of life. And one could argue that the TV producer is manufacturing a false sense of reality. Knowing that we only see pieces of truth can help us to be cautious about unhealthy habits or biases that these shows can display. Some shows even experiment.
with disrupting our biases on who is TV worthy. We've learned that our experience of a singer is different when we view them face to face versus when they're behind a chair or under a mask. And even though the music industry thinks we only want singers between the ages of 15 and 28, many shows have demonstrated that viewers see value beyond that.
There is a subgroup... of consumer behavior lovingly known as hate watching that has been studied for how to process reality TV. Hate watching involves viewing something with the same level of investment in story and relationships, but with just enough critical distance to detect what's being left out and to challenge the behaviors that they see.
One study showed that viewers who hate watched were much less likely to take on the undesirable behaviors that they witnessed. But, if you're a guilty pleasure watcher like me, there's still wisdom to be gained from reality TV. Imagine you're the camera operator who gets to decide what the audience sees. Or, imagine you're the TV producer who gets to decide the questions that drive the plot line. Now imagine being the camera operator or TV producer in your own life.
What would you include? What is being left out or distorted? These new lenses can help inform the way you approach the challenges you face. We could spend our lives feeling guilty for the everyday things we do to relax, to unwind, to feel human.
But then we'd miss a chance to learn if we didn't take time to understand the why. Reality TV shows us both the bright spots and blemishes of our society. But it can also show us something about what we are, who we want to connect with, where we can free our thinking, and how to better communicate with others.
It simply requires the courage. to view reality TV as a powerful lens through which to view humanity.