Social Trust, Social Partner Time and Television Time

Social trust is an important phenomenon, but the influence of important time-based measures upon trust has not been examined. Such measures include social contact and anti-social activity, such as television watching, which allows for the co-presence of other people. This paper reports on associations between trust and weighted means of co-present ‘social’ time (defined as time spent in various ‘social’ activities) and co-present time spent watching television, using the Australian Time Use Survey, 2006. It finds that trust is associated with social time spent in the co-presence of ‘strangers’ predominately from outside the household, and that TV watching in the co-presence of ‘familiars’—friends and family—is negatively associated with trust.