A Netflix Addiction: The Constant Urge to Binge

Alina Page

“Just one more,” you tell yourself, “I need to know what happens, it's only forty more minutes. I'll stop after this one.” We tell ourselves the same things every time, and then we are up till 1am watching our favorite show on Netflix. The problem, however, is that because it is so easy to watch these shows, It has become an actual addiction.

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It starts with you innocently watching one episode of your favorite show and then slowly, without realizing it, you have spent four hours or more watching it. Every once in awhile, there is nothing wrong with binge watching, but when it becomes an everyday occurrence, that’s when you realize that things have gone too far and need to change.

To adjust from your usual life schedule is something that most people rather not do. So when you need to adjust, it isn’t that simple. In my case, I come home from school or work, head up to my room, close my door, and in an instant I’m on my bed watching Netflix once again. When you have nothing better to do, yeah, watching your favorite show for hours doesn’t seem that bad, but when you decide to shirk responsibilities to do so, it becomes more toxic than you ever realized. TV shows are dangerous, at the end of every episode there’s always something that happens to leave you intrigued, ideally so you’ll continue to watch it every week on that certain day that it’s on. With every ending of a season, there’s something even more shocking or intriguing that leaves you waiting until another season comes out. This is the secret weapon to all shows, it’s what leaves you hanging and wanting more. With Netflix, all the waiting is gone and you have the opportunity to watch the next episode or next season with the push of a button, and that’s where the issue develops.

With the addiction leaving you to push play on the next episode, even though it’s already midnight and you have school the next morning, you might wonder why your exhaustion isn’t getting the best of you. Since the ending of an episode leaves you to ponder, your body gets stressed with not knowing what will happen next. When faced with the stress of not knowing, the body produces an excess of CRH, a hormone that mediates the release of other stress hormones in the body. This causes

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the body to remain alert, which then disrupts sleep. So, when you're faced with that cliffhanger at midnight, you're suddenly not so tired and you find yourself pushing through the next episode. That explains a lot doesn’t it? It sure explains why I have that issue with staying up all night watching my favorite show, and why I don’t feel the slightest bit tired doing it. So then why do we continue to constantly do this when we know that it is a bad habit? We all joke about being addicted to Netflix, but could we actually really be addicted?

Everyone has a slight addiction with Netflix, and when we watch episodes over and over again, we find ourselves talking about it with friends. You compare how many they have watched to how many you have watched. Netflix is designed as a checklist for a reason, the more you watch the more you check off your list. When we check an episode or season off our list and move to the next, it triggers a neurochemical cascade of serotonin, which is satiety, and dopamine which is pleasure. When we achieve the completion of a season on a show, we're actually tapping into the reward center of our brains. Is this what the world of technology has come to?

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That finishing a number of episodes, or even a whole series allows us to feel as if we have completed a task? This feeling of completion, causes a surge of dopamine release in our brains, and then the dopamine motivates us to keep watching more, creating this feedback loop that is never ending. We continue to watch these shows all the time and delay our everyday tasks just because a trigger in our brain is released and we feel the need to continue watching. This dopamine release and motivation is actually an indication of an addiction, which then poses the question on if we could actually be addicted. However, since 1996, Internet Addiction Disorder has been studied and considered for inclusion into the clinical setting as a documentable disorder. While this represents an extreme that won't affect most Netflix users, it’s a reality when you're talking about binge-watching TV for hours on end.

Many people, however, fall in the habit of watching Netflix over and over again. From one forty minute show, to another, and another, Netflix users watch more than two billion hours of movies and television shows every month. With this, it is obvious that Netflix destroys your time management. How you might wonder? Because the human brain best receives, processes, and remembers information in small segments, also known as the “chunking principle.” This includes the way we process time. It's much easier for us to divide our time into concrete portions such as 30 minutes or 60 minutes. But, when it comes to most shows on Netflix, we are talking about 40 minutes or 20 minutes, which doesn't exactly fit into our designated time chunks. So when you give yourself one hour to watch Netflix before you have to get back to your responsibilities, that means you have about enough time to watch one and a half episodes of a forty minute show, and no one, including myself, likes to end a show right in the middle. So because of this, you just have to continue until you're two episodes in, and twenty minutes over your one-hour limit. Therefore, you might as well watch one more episode to make it an even two hours of Netflix, and that's how our time management gets completely manipulated by our beloved Netflix.

Another problem with Netflix is that you fall completely in love with it. To some, including myself, Netflix is basically like a drug. It is able to pull you in because it can so easily and slowly consume you into the world of the show you are watching, and without your noticing, you fall in love and become utterly addicted. Binge watching our favorite shows on Netflix definitely makes us “happy.” However, can the light of the screen also be taking part of our happiness, in which the light can make us believe that we are feeling happy when in reality we aren't? As most know, light is a major factor in the regulation of sleep wake cycles, so you've probably heard that too much light from a TV screen

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or laptop may keep you awake late at night. However, recent studies have found that bright lights can naturally increase levels of serotonin in our brains, which is a neurotransmitter most commonly known for its contribution to feelings of well-being and happiness. Therefore not only is the light from your screen keeping you awake so you can watch more, but it's also providing you with this sense of happiness that we have no control over.

In my experience, Netflix is extremely addicting. Staying up all night and not doing homework or responsibilities, it full on consumes you. With its addicting agencies, if you can’t control the urges, you’re better off stopping before you’re completely engulfed with it all. However, I am fully aware that it is easier said than done. But with everything, a lot of people have short attention spans. Either reality sets in, or something else takes control of your attention, and the once really bad Netflix addiction, soon is just a not-so-bad satisfying habit. For most anyways.                                                                                                                                                                                                  

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