Tweeting doesn’t aid TV enjoyment

More than half of television viewers between 18 and 24 years old engage in social media on a second screen while watching, but a new University of Connecticut study says this engagement does not increase enjoyment of a show.

The UConn Department of Communication found in its study that tweeting reduces viewers’ ability to immerse themselves into the TV narrative.

“Social media metrics are an important and widely used measure of user engagement, (but) engagement may not necessarily mean enjoyment,” Saraswathi Bellur, a UConn assistant professor of communication who co-authored the study, said in an email.

Researchers separated 230 college students into two groups. One group watched the television show “Friends” while sending at least five tweets, and the other group watched the same show without tweeting. A survey afterward showed that the participants who did not tweet were more likely to be “transported” into the show and feel “more intensified emotions,” the release states. Not focusing entirely on the narrative of the show is likely what reduces enjoyment, said Xiaowen Xu, a UConn doctoral student who co-authored the study.

“You’re asking people to do a different thing when they could have involved themselves more with the story,” she said. “It kind of takes away part of their cognitive ability to get immersed.”

Some TV shows encourage and initiate audience conversations on social media, and the study imitated that to an extent, Xu said, but more research needs to be done.