Television watching as a routine activity: New evidence involving the relationship between television watching and delinquency

•The present study examined the relationship between televising watching and adolescent involvement in delinquency.•The amount of time spent watching TV is negatively associated with delinquency even after controlling for key covariates.•Lifestyle-routine activities theory serves as a useful theoretical approach to understanding the role of TV watching in juvenile delinquency. While researchers have strived to ascertain the relationship between violent media exposure and aggression, empirical research on the association between television viewing and delinquency is scant. Drawing on lifestyle-routine activities theory, the authors suggest that television watching can be viewed as a routine activity that leads juveniles to spend more time at home while substituting away from situational opportunities conducive to delinquent acts. Using a large longitudinal dataset on South Korean youth, the current study examines the relationship between television watching and engagement in delinquency. The findings from negative binomial regression analysis reveal that the amount of time spent watching TV is negatively associated with delinquency even after controlling for variables derived from various criminological theories. Our findings suggest that although excessive television viewing among youth may not be constructive and thus unadvisable, television watching has some delinquency-reducing effects among young people.