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Better Living Through Reality? Experts say reality TV teaches many messages on health – but are they good ones? 
Reality television has been called many things – sensational, crass and boorish among just a few. But educational? Get real. Yet health and psychology experts say that shows such as “Survivor,” “The Amazing Race” and “The Biggest Loser” beam a plethora of lessons and messages into the home on issues from drug use to healthy eating. And, like most lessons in life, there are the good, the bad and the ugly. “I think there’s no question that there are both positive and negative health-related effects from the reality TV shows on the air,” says Vicky Rideout, vice president and director of the Program for the Study of Entertainment Media and Health for the Kaiser Family Foundation in Menlo Park, Calif. “On the one hand, there are a lot of shows that are explicitly about health issues, and that may bring them to the attention of a lot of viewers – whether it’s the painful price to be paid for drug addiction in a show like ‘Intervention’ or the health consequences of obesity in a show like ‘The Biggest Loser,’” Rideout says. “On the other hand, there are those who would argue that some reality shows promote negative health behaviors, such as casual sex.” Dr. Lisa Hark, who hosted the series “Honey, We’re Killing The Kids,” sees both positive and negative lessons from reality television’s most popular weight loss show, “The Biggest Loser.” “I think there are ideas for exercise and meals, plus inspiration and hope,” says Hark, director of the Nutrition Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. “It’s also very visual. You get to see how hard people really have to work to lose weight.” However, she says, “The biggest problem with those shows is that they are in a very isolated environment. It’s very controlled. It’s not the real world. When they go home, they need to work real hard with sticking with the program.” Dr. David Bickham, staff scientist at the Center on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital Boston, believes the show’s message is even less healthy. “In terms of what we look like, ‘The Biggest Loser’ is pretty clear. The big people are the contestants, the people who you don’t want to look like. The coaches are the people you want to look like,” Bickham says. “It’s continuing the sort of primary message in the media of what is the right way to look and what is the wrong way to look. And pretty consistently, the right way to look is what a majority of people can’t look like. You are setting people up for an unrealistic and unhealthy view of what they should look like.” This may be affecting us more than we realize. Bickham recently conducted a study of 13- to 18-year-olds who watched “Survivor,” “American Idol” and “America’s Next Top Model.” “The more they watched reality television, the more likely they were to hide or try to change the way they looked,” Bickham reports. And while the study does not conclusively prove that television affects a person’s self-perception, Bickham says, “It’s early evidence that there is a relationship between how these kids see themselves and their viewing of reality television shows.” Nicole Blair, a researcher for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Ga., helped to conduct a study on “The Osbournes” while a student at Emory University in 2005. The study found that the show offered a mixed message on the use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco. “The majority of the drug references were a rejection of use, but most of the alcohol and tobacco references implied an endorsement,” Blair says. And while Blair and Bickham say that more research needs to be done on the health-related effects of reality television, there is no shortage of books on the psychological and social messages from such shows. Richard Gerrig, editor of “The Psychology of Survivor” (Benbella Books, 2007), says that contestants on that show win “in a way that parents probably do not want their kids to make their way through life.” “Sometimes you win ‘Survivor’ because you have so brilliantly stabbed people in the back,” says Gerrig, a professor of psychology at Stony Brook University, New York. “Sometimes you don’t win because of the same reason. From season to season, it’s hard to know what pro-social lesson you would want to extract from ‘Survivor,’ although I can imagine watching ‘Survivor’ and telling your kids, ‘Here are the kinds of characters to watch out for.’” Adam-Troy Castro, author of “My Ox is Broken: Detours, Roadblocks, Fast Forwards and Other Great Moments from TV’s Amazing Race” (Benbella Books, 2006), documented some useful life lessons for couples. “One of the enduring elements of the show’s popularity is the difference between couples that fight viciously during the show and those that manage to get along,” Castro says. One important lesson, he says, “is determining when the fight is worth having and when it’s best to back down and declare the issue unimportant.” Some experts argue that reality television shows are not teaching us anything new. Instead, they are just recycling old messages in a new package. In one chapter of the anthology, “Common Sense: Intelligence as Presented on Popular Television” (Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), Marilyn Ellzey and Alison Miller analyze “The Apprentice,” “Beauty and the Geek” and “The Scholar.” “(Ellzey and Miller) find that reality TV isn’t evolutionary or groundbreaking but rather just a repackaging of the same old stereotypes -– in this case, these shows perpetuate the ideas that intelligence and formal education aren’t as important to success as physical attributes,” says Dr. Lisa Holderman, the book’s editor. If there is anything that health experts agree upon, it’s that reality television is a powerful medium to impart messages on health. “Reality television is yet another new platform for health messages to reach the public – whether part of an intentional communications plan or not,” Rideout says. “So those who make those shows, viewers who watch them and folks in the public health community need to be aware of that, and health advocates should be reaching out to the reality TV world.” Meanwhile, some health lessons are best learned in real life – when the television is off. Hark recalls parents learning such a lesson with their overweight kids on “Honey, We’re Killing The Kids.” “If you want to improve the eating habits of your child, the best way to start is by setting a good example,” Hark says. “If you’re always sitting on the couch, in front of the television or in front of the computer, that’s what your child is going to do. So go outside and play. You don’t have to do anything fancy or expensive. Just playing catch with a Frisbee or a baseball is easy.” |
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