The Power of Television

It’s dinner time in the Shukla household. Plates hit the table and cutlery are being placed while the sound of the popular television show“The Simpsons” plays in the background. This ritual started during quarantine when conversations around the dinner table seemed too much for Shukla and her three kids. Yet somehow, old-fashioned TV seemed to be the perfect bonding time for everyone.

Sara Shukla lives in Boston and is a writer and frequent contributor to WBUR, a public radio station in Massachusetts. Her husband, Anil, is Chief of Emergency Medicine at St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford, MA — a new position he took in January 2020. Shukla thought it was an adjustment that would take time, but she could not have predicted how intense a change their family life would face when the pandemic hit a couple of months later.

Shukla and her husband with their three kids.

“He was coming home after 14-hour days trying to prep the emergency room and just stripping in the garage,” says Shukla. “We had a trash can for his scrubs, and we have three little kids, so we had his area bared off with plywood and it was just crazy, stressful and we weren't sure, back then what he was going to bring home and what it all meant.”

Shukla and her husband ultimately decided he should live on their boat for the next 10 weeks for the safety of their family.

Shukla's family boat.

She says it was quite a bizarre and isolating situation, taking care of three kids by herself. The stress of the pandemic was getting to her.

Utilizing television as an escape tactic is not uncommon for frequent TV watchers. “TV Time,” a TV and movie tracking tool, released a U.K. - based study that found 76% of viewers are using TV as a common escape from reality during social distancing.

“People have skewed their viewership to try to go from being just a distraction to being some sort of comfort layer,” says Rebecca Chandler, a brand content consultant.

According to experts, TV is not only utilized as a comfort but also to validate the experiences in our everyday lives.

“That's probably the one sort of difference in storytelling or in media consumption. Some people are going toward stories that help them sort of escape their world. And some are going toward stories that help them confirm or affirm their experience and sort of validate their emotional experience,” says Drea Letamendi, a clinical psychologist and interim director of the resilience center at UCLA.

Letamendi combines her love for psychology and superheroes through her work because she has seen how storytelling is impactful during difficult times.

“I kept these interests’ kind of separate until I started to notice some similarities between psychological science, mental health and stories in the media, and in particular stories of heroism that a lot of us are drawn to,” says Letamendi. She says that storytelling is extremely important especially right now when it comes to our mental health.

The stories Shukla gravitated toward offered catharsis — shows that made her laugh and had action, but nothing too stressful. Popular pandemic shows like “Tiger King'' were not of interest to her. Some shows she notes are “Ted Lasso,” “Schitt’s Creek,” and “Ozark.”

When discussing her favorites, she brings up watching “Ted Lasso," which was a magical experience for her. Shukla was reminded of a particular scene where Lasso gives a speech about hope to his team. She felt it applied perfectly to the uncertainty of the pandemic because it made her think, “can we hope again?”

Shukla was not the only one having special, connecting moments with her shows. According to a data set from 2020, the average U.S. adult will watch 3 hours and 30 minutes per day. This represents an increase from previous years as more people stayed home for work due to the pandemic. Chandler says viewership demographics changed as well.

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“Midday is now prime time. People work from home,” Chandlers says. “They take a lunch hour and they watch television, which is really unusual. So, it's changed.”

During quarantine, there was not a specific type of show that people watched. In fact, they ranged from several genres. A study from Reel Good shows there were genres such as comedies becoming more popular and horror became less popular. Shows like “Tiger King” were trending but were too stressful for Shukla. Yet “Ozark '' was one of the most popular shows according to Reel Good, and she found enjoyment in that. Shows like “Ozark” with action packed story-lines can be considered stressful, however Shukla she found that watching the characters experience worse situations than hers, made her a comfort in that. Whereas shows like “Tiger King,” were just entertainment with no trajectory she says.

Ozark trailer

Letamendi loves the Marvel Universe and uses a popular show from that world, “WandaVision,” as an example of how TV can help people overcome adversity and hardship. The grief, loss, and trauma in the series allow us to tap into these emotions when we otherwise might not.

After social distancing mandates were lifted Shukla realized what really got her through the isolating time — the power of television. She describes seeing her friends for the first time since the pandemic began and all she could bring herself to talk about was the shows she watched the past 12 months. The shows she binged watched to help her escape from the harsh reality of what was going on around her, became her best friends.

“They were my social life all year. They were my best friends, no one else experienced this?” Shukla asked when describing how she feels about the series she watched.

This connection to our favorite fictional characters is common.

“There is a word for that called ‘parasocial’ relationships, that is this non delusional connection,” Letamendi says. “And we feel this real bond we feel with fictional characters.”

Having a special bond with our beloved characters is healthy and important, however Letamendi says having real-life connections are necessary as well.

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Letamendi as a comic. (Dr. Drea Letamendi)

Before the darkness of the pandemic, Shukla was writing a novel but felt uninspired during these times. Not only did the friends on the screen support unexpected ways to Shukla, but the stories she also habitually watched each day brought back creativity to her writing.

“I think they felt like oxygen in a way, so I wouldn't say they're super meaningful,” she says. “I feel like these shows just pulled me out of it.”

Being a storyteller during a pandemic made her feel like her work was not important, compared to her husband whose job is to save lives.

“It can be hard, I think, to build that up sometimes and to say like no, this is valid, this is worth it. Like this is its own form of not health care, but you know this its this own form of helping people.”

TV has brought Shukla an escape, more family bonding time, a renewed sense of creativity in her writing and hope for the future. Clinical psychologist Letamndi wants people not to overlook the importance of storytelling in the media.

“I really want to ask folks to consider it, embrace it. And if they're already connected to stories, to feel affirmed that this is something that many of us do. And it's also something that might be good for our mental health.”

Both Shukla and Chandler remain curious about what the future holds for TV.