HAPPINESS- EFFECT AND AFFECT OF ADS AND TV ON IT.
In 1998, the King of Bhutan, the small, idyllic Buddhist kingdom nestling high in the Himalayas, announced that his nation's objective would be the Gross National Happiness. What an enlightened ruler!
Yet one year later in 1999 he made a fateful decision: to allow television in to his country. Until then TV had been banned, as had all public advertising. Licenses were given to more than 30 cable operators. The most successful operator provided forty-six channels, including Rupert Murdoch's Star TV network. And so the Bhutanese could see the usual mixture f football, violence, sexual betrayal, consumer advertising, wrestling and the like. They lapped it up, but the impact on their society provides a remarkable natural experiment in how technological change can affect attitudes and behaviour.
Quite soon everyone noticed a sharp increase on family break-up, crime and drug taking. In schools violence in the playground increased, so that one principal's annual report had to include a new section called "Controversies," which reported "marathon staff meetings" to discuss these new problems. The "impact study" by some local academics showed that a third of parents now preferred watching TV to talking to their children.
One should have course be cautious in generalizing from only one episode. But this striking tale reinforces the commonsense view that TV (as also consumer publicity) is a major independent force in our lives and not simply a reflection of what we already are. (DNA influenced).
