Binge-Watching: The Socially-Accepted Addiction
When just one more episode becomes one more season.
We’ve all been there. It’s a Friday night and you’re settling in to start the TV show that everyone is talking about. Effort is minimal, the episodes play automatically so you don’t even have to pick up the remote. All you have to do is watch. Then, as if out of nowhere… humiliation. A question glows across the screen: “Are you still watching?”. You stare blankly at this accusatory message as it dawns on you: it’s now Sunday night. Which means you’ve been sat in the same spot for two days. What do you have to show for it?
Perhaps it’s the delusions that you could now perform surgery after watching a seasons of Grey’s Anatomy back to back. Or is it impulsive ambitions of becoming a lawyer because Suits made it look so glamorous. Ultimately though, the only thing you’ll have to offer at the weekend debrief at work is an impassioned retelling of seasons 1–3 of Game of Thrones. At that point you start to wonder whether it was worth it.
Then comes a familiar feeling of guilt, which haunts us in a post-COVID culture. It’s a culture of constant pressure to always “seize the day” and to achieve all your goals, doing so immediately. Unfortunately, after a weekend spent in front of a screen the only thing which has seized is your legs, and your sole achievement? The imprint on your couch. Needless to say, binge-watching has become a very popular way to watch TV. But where did it come from and why do we do it?
Defining it
Binge-watching can be defined simply as the overconsumption of visual media. It is when someone watches a continuous stream of content in one sitting and in rapid succession. In the age of technology and the decreasing attention span, this uninterrupted viewing is steadily becoming the preferred experience. Audiences are no longer satisfied with just one episode a week. In order to be “fully engrossed in the narrative”, they must watch a season at a time.
This way of watching came into full effect during the COVID-19 pandemic. People worldwide were staying at home and were often in front of a screen. For those with the privilege of free time and the means it was a distraction. Serving as a cultivation in their living rooms which blocked out what was happening outside. It was escapism, simple as that.
The Rise of the Streaming Service
Traction came with the pandemic, but binge-watching was first and foremost a result of streaming services. With sites like Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video; members have endless hours of television at their fingertips. Physical boxsets are all but obsolete, because who can be bothered to spend an extra 5 minutes setting up the DVD player.
Long before the pandemic in 2013, Harris Interactive conducted a survey on behalf of streaming giant Netflix. This declared binge-watching to be “the New Normal”. Already it was widespread behaviour, with 61% of TV streamers saying they engaged in binge-watching regularly. The survey even tackled the common perception of the activity being a weekend-long pyjama marathon. Instead the survey found that a majority (73%) defined a binge-watch as between 2–6 episodes per sitting. Furthermore, nearly three quarters of streamers had positive feelings towards their habit. Another survey conducted in 2016, found that in the United States 70% of surveyed viewers engaged in “Marathon TV Viewing”. This was constituted watching an average of five episodes per session. Not too bad right? It isn’t until you put it into the context.
Take the Netflix-produced Orange Is the New Black. Often cited as a show which introduced people to binge-watching, it has episodes of between 51–93 minutes runtime. This would make a five episode binge last nearly 5 hours (at least). These hours clocked seem relatively mild when compared to analysis of viewing patterns Netflix themselves conducted in 2018. They found that new members would, on average, begin their first binge-watch 12 days after signing up. Most would go on to complete a season within three days.
The Binge-watching Brand
It is on the back of these kinds of statistics that streaming services promote and encourage the binge-watching habit. Netflix now has a dedicated section to TV programmes which you can “Watch in One Weekend”. During the pandemic, their “Top 10 TV Programmes” reduced members to a state of FOMO until they too had consumed The Queen’s Gambit in its entirety (and bought a chess board). Other platforms have followed suit: Prime Video has its selection of “Binge-worthy box sets” and the “Bingeable Series” collection is the first you see upon opening Disney+, no scrolling necessary.
Friends: The most (Binge) watchable show?
Many see this development as a good thing, giving viewers the flexibility to watch around their own schedule when before they were confined to the television guide. If you missed an episode or a show passed you by, you had no choice but to wait for a rerun. Now things are different. Most of Gen Z don’t know what it was like to have to wait *gasp* a whole week to find out what happened after Ross kissed Rachel for the first time on Friends. Or even worse, having to wait months after he said her name at the altar of his wedding to Emily in the season finale. The impact of these cliffhangers are a thing of the past. Now, the next season is already queued and ready to go as soon as the credits roll.
The altered viewing experience is of no concern to the streaming services themselves. How could it? The eye-watering $100 million renewal of Netflix’s rights to Friends in 2019 was easily worth every penny. With a 10 season-long run, a heavy nostalgia factor and light-hearted narrative, Friends it the perfect storm of “bingeable” television. It continues to prove this by consistently ranking amongst the most streamed shows today in the UK.
“The Bear” and encouraging the habit
Whilst binge-watching often means revisiting an old favourite, new TV shows have adapted to satisfy this way of watching. When the trailer for the new season of the Emmy-winning drama The Bear dropped, fans were most excited to learn that all episodes would be available upon its release. This sparked a flurry of fanfare, and even a Reddit discussion called “Season 3 Release Watch Strategy”. One user shared their approach: “I’ll let my willpower on the day decide. (which probably means binging in one very long binge session)”.
In the case of The Bear, even the show’s cast haven’t been able to resist a binge-watch. In an interview with Stephen Colbert, Jeremy Allen White (who stars as Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto on the show) revealed that he watched seven episodes of the new season in one sitting, “because it’s just…so good.” This demonstrates acute understanding of TV viewing habits of today. Promotion of a show as a “Bingeable Watch” has to be as important as the show itself. Besides, if Jeremy Allen White binge-watched it, then why shouldn’t I?
Has it changed the way these episodes are written and produced? Certainly in the case of “The Bear” which wrapped two weeks before its premiere. Despite this undoubtedly quick turnaround, White himself calling it “insane”, the show seemed to maintain the standards of its first two seasons. Perhaps this seemingly rushed process may just have transcended to become industry standard. Rumours which have circulated since March that The Bear was quietly renewed for season 4 with production scheduled back to back with season 3 would certainly satisfy this trajectory.
Is it bad for you?
“If you watch too much TV, your eyes will go square”. That’s the consequence parents have been warning their children about since the invention of the television. The parental adage wasn’t a scientifically accurate claim, it was a cautionary tale to discourage children from spending too much time in front of the TV. Now with binge-watching, your eyes may not go square, but the health risks are certainly there.
The article, “Associations of Problematic Binge-Watching with Depression, Social Interaction Anxiety, and Loneliness” has a title which speaks for itself. Published in 2021, authors Jia-Ji Sun and Yen-hung Chang consider the emerging problem of binge-watching and its possible links to mental health.
However, it isn’t that simple, Sun and Chang describing the relationship between mental health and binge-watching as “under scrutiny”. Indeed, there are studies which have found that binge-watching makes the viewer more relaxed, more in control and happier.
Addicted to TV
So is the jury still out? Not really. The research into the negative impact of binge-watching far outweighs that which champions it. In 2021, Northwestern Medicine published an article entitled “Binge Watching: Three Ways TV Affects Your Health”. Another title which speaks for itself, the article considers the “high” binge-watching can produce and the dangers of that. Whilst engaging in an activity we enjoy, the release of dopamine in our brain makes us feel good. It is a feeling that drugs also induce, and their addictive qualities causes your brain to crave more. In the article, Dr. Danesh A. Alam explains that like other addictive behaviours, binging a TV show can create a “pseudo-addiction” to the show and its characters. Although it may seem dramatic, really how different is just one more episode to just one more of something else?
Addictive qualities aside, binge-watching isolates as much as it brings together. Whilst the phenomenon has “fostered a sense of shared enthusiasm” in fan culture online, it is so often a solo activity. It can be easy for the disconnect sought by binge-watching to become alienation of the self. A study on its psychological effects found that those displaying binge-watching behaviours are much more likely to be affected by depression. By using the constant stream of TV they can escape their “current state of frustration”.
Final thoughts
The conception of Binge-watching signposts the dramatic changes to how we have consumed media over the last 20 years. Since the conception of YouTube in 2005, the compulsion to watch several videos or episodes in one sitting has only grown with the expansion of ways to do it. In the past five years, this explosion has seen the number of streaming services available worldwide rise to over 200. Growing statistics like these have no signs of slowing down, cementing binge-watching as the go-to way we enjoy our favourite shows. However you look at it, the way we watch TV has changed forever. But has it changed for the better?
