Binge-watching TV shows on Netflix sounds like Heaven on Earth. Lying in bed, curled up in a blanket with not a care in the world but if Orange is the New Black's Piper Chapman will ever get it together is basically living the dream.
Unfortunately, getting to this point might show something darker going on underneath. A recent study links feelings of loneliness and depression to binge-watching. Oh, say it isn't so!
Yoon Hi Sung, Eun Yeon Kang and Wei-Na Lee from the University of Texas at Austin surveyed 316 participants aged 18 to 29 years old and asked them how often they watched TV, how often they felt alone, depressed or like they couldn't self-regulate and how often they binge-watched TV. The researchers found that the participants that were more lonely or depressed were more likely to binge-watch TV, citing this as a way of escaping negative feelings.
Unsurprisingly, the study also found that those who lacked self-control were more likely to binge-watch, going to the next episode, even if they had other tasks to perform. Of course, you don't really need a study to tell you that. Addictions, whether they are to food, alcohol or drugs, are obviously widely seen as harmful and known to be used by people as ways to cope with bad feelings.
Along those lines, the word "binge" always had a negative connotation, until people started using it to refer to marathoning TV shows in this new age of streaming entertainment that we live in.
"Even though some people argue that binge-watching is a harmless addiction, findings from our study suggest that binge-watching should no longer be viewed this way," said Sung in a statement. "Even though people know they should not, they have difficulty resisting the desire to watch episodes continuously. Our research is a step toward exploring binge-watching as an important media and social phenomenon."
Unfortunately, the direction entertainment is moving in today will only fuel these obsessions. Streaming services, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video that create their own content enable this type of behavior by releasing all of the episodes in a season at once. With the commercial and critical success that those streaming services have had, it's unlikely they will slow down any time soon. Well, let's just hope binge-watching will be an enjoyable activity in the future, not a harmful one.
