Is the Family Room Obsolete?

Does your family still get together to watch TV? 

It’s 2023, so maybe not. But let’s take a trip back in time. During the 1950s, widespread access to televisions arrived, and with it, the idea of a living room for just such an activity.

By 1955, the number of U.S. households with television sets had jumped to more than 64 percent from just 9% a few years earlier. Just like the Internet in the ‘90s, this development would disrupt how we spend time with others. 

Returning to the 1950s, the living room became more than just a hub for entertaining. Instead, it transformed into a gathering place with the TV as its centerpiece. This vaunted room could simultaneously accommodate leisure, family time, even food? 

Entire industries grew out of the new living room, like frozen pre-made meals affectionately—or not so affectionately—dubbed “TV dinners.” According to the Smithsonian, Swanson sold ten million frozen dinner trays in ‘54 during their first year. (Chilled victuals once included in a soldier’s knapsack could now be found in every American household. All thanks to TV, or rather what the tube heralded, our new widely shared cultural experience.) 

This phenomenon dovetailed with other related developments. 

The ad industry as portrayed in Mad Men exploded, with its coast to coast marketing campaigns mass-consumed by a public seated on their couches. Groundbreaking historical moments were also witnessed in living rooms, from the moon landing to Vietnam coverage, dubbed America’s “first television war.”  

Flash forward. 

Around the ‘80s, we found ourselves in the same room, yet with changing preferences. Seismic shifts in content and technology offered greater consumption choices and novelty as to where to place our attention. 

The cultural question morphed from “Should we watch?” to “What do you want to watch?” 

Some of the changes concerned children’s watching habits. 

To be clear, it’s not as if kids’ programs didn’t exist before then. In fact, youths in the ‘50s and ‘60s enjoyed classics, such as Lassie, Howdy Doody, Gilliagan’s Island, and other shows catering to this demographic. It’s just that at this time, most families had but one TV set and precious few channels. 

In other words, when it came to what to watch, parents and kids alike had to wait their turn. Cue the bickering. 

TVs continued dropping in price, leading households to buy more of them around the time VCRs hit the market and cable programming boomed. Soon, bedrooms became mini-movie theaters, setting the stage for premium content on platforms like HBO—which literally stands for Home Box Office, Inc.

Now, kids could enjoy their Saturday morning cartoons in the den, while parents enjoyed their own (sometimes adult) content in peace. 

Did this moment herald the peak of our affinity with television? Did it also signify the decline of a homogenous popular culture?

One indicator suggests this reality. 

Cable subscriptions have declined year over year since the ‘80s and haven’t recovered since. Looking back, twin technological advances from this period set us on our current path. First, the rise of the personal computer, then the phone—later to be the smartphone, ushered in the personalized content era. More and more, we began paying attention to what we wanted to, not what other family members wished to see. 

Also, now flush with massive amounts of data to analyze, Hollywood grew ever more sophisticated with its content approach. Once upon a time, advertisers only had access to each household, via the Neilsen rating system. 

By the 2000s, they could access the preferences of every individual in a household too. (Consider how Netflix confirms your profile each time you use its platform.) 

Now operating under the belief families needn’t argue over what to watch—that everyone could pick what they wanted, studios went into overdrive, catering content to ever more specific demographics. (Bronies, anyone?)

Meanwhile, tech advances showed no signs of slowing down. 

Streaming services improved to the point where underdogs like Hulu could stand up to legacy goliaths, leading many viewers to cut the cord, once more destabilizing any notion of a shared zeitgeist. If everyone in a household is watching something different, how can we have a monolithic culture?

Now, in our digital streaming age with its plethora of screens (TVs, laptops, phones, tablets, etc.) the family room is nearly obsolete. 

We once shared moments as a family unit. Gathered on the couch, we cheered for spectacles like Miracle on Ice and cried together at Steve Carell's last episode of The Office. 

But it’s not just entertainment that’s splintering. 

Our news is now hyper-personalized, too. We can tailor our feeds, choosing topics we're interested in, shutting out things we don't want to know. This begs a reasonable question: How can we have informed civic debates if we're all living in our own personalized echo chambers? 

Is it any wonder it feels nearly impossible to come to a consensus on the many challenges we face? We’ve eschewed the idea of a true mainstream, favoring instead personalized experience over the collective. 

 The solution isn’t demanding that we return to the days of only having a few TV channels and a handful of radio stations. That ship has sailed. But we can be more intentional about how we consume media. 

With a little effort, we can watch and listen to offerings outside of our usual preferences. We can also seek out news sources challenging our beliefs and opinions. Moreover, we can become intentional about what we and members of our family are consuming. Employing these tactics will help us and future generations navigate our rapidly evolving—and atomizing—world. 

As the Attention Economy chugs along, ceaselessly upending how we view reality, and also, how we view each other, let’s not lose sight of our shared cultural experiences and our sense of community. It’s our human birthright. And worth paying attention to.

Thank you for reading. If you like what you just read, please subscribe for more content. We write about how technology is transforming how we create and consume sports, movies, videos, TV, games, and social media. Any opinions or forecasts contained herein reflect the personal and subjective judgments and assumptions of the author only.