Building Social Capital in Young People: The Role of Mass Media and Life Outlook

Abstract

In this study we evaluate different models of media use to determine whether television and other popular media facilitate or hinder the development of social capital in young people. We surveyed a nationally representative sample of 14- to 22-year olds (N = 1,800) to assess the media–social capital relationship controlling for pessimistic life outlook. Consistent with Beck's (1967) theory of depression, we hypothesized that young people with a pessimistic life outlook will be less trusting of others, will withdraw from civic activity, and will turn to media that have low cognitive demand (e.g., television shows) and avoid media that require greater cognitive resources (e.g., books and informational use of the Internet). Using structural equation modeling, we found that despite support for those predictions, total time spent viewing television remained inversely related to both social trust and civic engagement. However, model tests indicated that civic activity enhances trust by reducing time spent with television and increasing book reading. Furthermore, moderate consumption of entertainment television does not reduce trust. Hence, the results reaffirm the favorable relationships between social capital and media use, including television, in young people but continue to reveal adverse relationships with heavy television use.

Keywords:

• political socialization
• media use
• civic activity
• social capital
• trust
• pessimism

The authors would like to thank Jack McLeod and Dhavan Shah as well as the authors of the other articles in this special issue for their constructive comments. We also acknowledge Mary Bock for ideas that helped shape the article.

Notes

1. Our measures of television use do not cover the entire spectrum of television content. There are movies and other noncontinuing shows as well as advertising that are heavily represented on this medium.

2. Although controlling for pessimism did not eliminate relations between media use and social capital, it was still possible that pessimism moderated the relation. However, both graphic and interaction tests revealed no evidence of moderation by either indicator of pessimism.

3. Because age was a potent correlate of social capital, we examined relations between media uses and each social capital indicator by age. These relations tended to follow the same pattern with little evidence of systematic differences by age group.

4. We thank Michael McDevitt for this suggestion.