Netflix Binge Watching as an Exonian
During my lower spring, a friend recommended to me a cartoon which was available on Netflix. Though I normally don’t watch cartoons, I was intrigued—this friend has excellent taste in televsion, and I decided to go ahead and sample the show on a Friday night. Fifteen episodes, one bag of Doritos and a Saturday later, I turned off my laptop to get some work done. Feeling guilty, I confessed to my mom that I had spent a good chunk of my Saturday watching cartoons. She responded as any responsible parent would, by locking me out of our Netflix account.
Don’t lie—you’ve probably also watched an unhealthy amount of TV through a streaming service, be it through Netflix or Hulu or Amazon. You’ve probably also dealt with the shame of finally closing out the browser window, facing a tremendous amount of guilt and the homework you haven’t done. It’s called binge-watching, and there’s a lot of psychology and manipulation that makes you click the “Next Episode” button.
The definition is a little hazy, but binge-watching is defined as watching an inordinate amount of TV in one sitting. More strict definitions put that number at three or four episodes, more realistic ones stretch it to seasons. In the past, this practice was called “marathoning.” Television networks would employ it to get people to watch more popular shows during their off-seasons, continuously running an entire season in a day. With the rise of internet TV streaming services, more people can now watch more than one episode of TV and don’t have to wait for a network to marathon a show as people did in days gone by. In a few short years, binge-watching has become a very common way to consume a weekend.
There are certain things that writers, producers, and online streaming services include in a season of a show that makes it more appealing and enticing to people who watch it. A good TV show will have a “hook” episode in every season, which is an episode that appears early on in the season and grabs people’s attention. More than seventy percent of the people who watch a hook episode will watch the rest of the season. If you watch a show until you hit the hook episode, the chances that you will binge-watch rise significantly. This mechanism for addiction is excellent for Netflix, but not so great for you.
Binge-watching, besides sucking up your weekends, is also linked with depression and loneliness. Consuming many hours’ worth of “Orange is the New Black” in one sitting is also not good for you physically; sitting for a long time, not exercising and eating an unwholesome amount of popcorn can lead to weight gain, diabetes, and an overall degradation of your physical health. If you binge-watch only once in a while, you will not wreck your life. If you binge-watch regularly, however, it becomes much more of a serious issue.
There are a couple of things you can do to get out of a binge-watching session if you don’t want to be in one. The first, surprisingly, is remorse. If you feel guilty before watching TV, or anxious because of all the work you have to do, you’re much more likely to watch only one or two episodes than to binge-watch. The nervousness you experience while binge-watching on a school night doesn’t feel good, and your body naturally wants to get rid of the anxiety by logging out of your Netflix account. Conversely, if you turn to Netflix with the express purpose of binge-watching, you will most definitely watch a whole season of “House of Cards.” If your Hulu habit is so serious that even the nagging of your conscious cannot repel you, timers to regulate how many episodes you really want to watch are very helpful. Doing so, however, still requires you to have the fortitude of spirit to actually turn off the TV when the alarm sounds.
Binge-watching is a relatively new phenomenon. As the way media is delivered to the consumer changes, consumers’ viewing patterns will adjust, as well. Binge-watching reflects people’s responses to new technology and their ability to cope with it, and, in a way, is a continuation of years of advancements and people’s abilities to abuse them. Over-watching will never go away, unless a new technology replaces it, but it does provide an opportunity for people to observe the way tools affect us and figure out ways to cope with bad habits.
And for your own sake, don’t watch eight hours’ worth of Netflix shows. It’s like battery acid to your grades.