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Watching More TV Increases Seniors' Negative Views
Of Aging
June 28,2005 - The more senior citizens watch
television, the greater their negative images of aging may be, but
maintaining a diary of viewing impressions increased their awareness of
the negative stereotyping on television, researchers at Yale report in
the Journal of Social Issues.
"These findings suggest that the promotion of
awareness could provide a means of helping elders confront ageism," said
lead author Becca Levy, associate professor in the Department of
Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale School of Medicine and the
Department of Psychology.
Study participants between 60- and 92-years-old
were randomly assigned to an intervention or control group. Both groups
filled out television-viewing diaries, based on those used by Nielsen,
for one week. The intervention group filled out an additional page per
day that asked them to evaluate how older characters were presented on
television viewed that day.
"As expected, all participants showed a
correspondence between greater television exposure and more negative
images of aging," said Levy. "Participants reported watching an average
of 21 hours of television per week."
The intervention group participants developed a
greater awareness of how older people are presented on television. One
81-year-old member of the intervention group wrote in his diary that the
elderly in television programs "shouldn't be targets of jokes so often."
A 68-year-old homemaker who watched more than 45 hours of television per
week noticed that older characters are often left out of programming.
She commented, "I feel like we've been ignored. I feel like we are
nonexistent."
Levy said less than two percent of primetime
television characters are age 65 or older, whereas this group comprises
12.7 percent of the population. She said the intervention group
participants intended to watch less television in the future.
Other authors on the study included Margie Donlon
of University of Rochester and Ori Ashman of Murdoch University in
Australia.
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