by Leonie Schittenhelm
Who doesn’t know this situation: you had the longest day, so all you want to do is go home, plop down your bag and cuddle up for an episode of your favourite TV show before an early night. Doesn’t sound too exciting, does it? But after your first episode, you decide to watch one more, and then – the plot quickens and you just really want to make sure that one character survived the gnarly explosion – just one more. Suddenly, it’s 2am on a weeknight and you are about to assure Netflix, that yes, you are still here, and for the love of god, would they please just continue with the next episode before that latest cliff-hanger makes you die of curiosity. Those my friend, are the classic signs of a TV binge.
Just as other binges involving alcohol or food, the TV binge has moved into the focus of modern research. While the negative side effects of excessive drinking might be more immediately obvious, a team of researchers from Newcastle University, the University of Stirling and Ottawa University are arguing for the importance of investigating TV binges in their paper, ‘‘‘Just one more episode’: Frequency and theoretical correlates of television binge watching”. Not for nothing is lack of physical activity number four on the list of mortality risks worldwide, and TV watching is the most popular sedentary activity during people’s free time. But what even constitutes a binge? And how do people feel about them?
These are just some of the questions the paper tried to answer by asking 110 people about their TV watching habits. They defined a TV ‘binge’ as watching more than two consecutive episodes of the same TV show in one sitting. While this seems quite a low threshold – and embarrassingly ups my TV binges per week to above the average of 1.47 that was reported by the participants – the reason that you move from the second into the third episode is that you are likely to have switched from a conscious decision to watch TV to a zombie-like ‘keep playing’-mode. This automaticity of pressing the ‘next episode’ button was reported to be especially frustrating for the study participants: most connected their excessive TV watching with feelings of regret and indicated that it interfered with pursuing other goals important to them. While a lot more research has to be done, TV binges are a cultural phenomenon that are not going away. Until we know more, I’d better get working on my personal impulse control.
Want to know more about this study? Give it a read yourself: Walton-Pattison, Emily, Stephan U. Dombrowski, and Justin Presseau. “‘Just one more episode’: Frequency and theoretical correlates of television binge watching.” Journal of health psychology 23, no. 1 (2018): 17-24.