Older adults' television viewing from a life-span perspective: past research and future challenges

This chapter overviews research on older adults television viewing and discusses the assumptions and empirical findings in terms of a life-span perspective. The life-span perspective emphasizes that gains and losses jointly occur in later life. Selection and compensation constitute two central strategies in gerontological models of how people adapt to gains and losses. With regard to television viewing, selection means that people can choose television viewing over other activities for reaching goals in high-priority domains because television viewing is appropriate given environmental demands and individual motivations, skills, and capacities. Compensation means that people can use television viewing as a substitute for diminished abilities or activities. This chapter reviews available literature in three sections: time use, social functions, and content preferences. A large share of previous research on older adults television viewing appears to be biased toward compensation, whereas research in this field insufficiently considered selection strategies.