Binge-watching has become commonplace among those who enjoy watching TV, especially those who have a Netflix subscription. When you start a series, time can fly by and we don’t always know how many hours we actually spent glued to the screen.
With even more resources, Americans are getting their fair share of prolonged entertainment. This means a lot of continuous sitting or lying down, which can have a real affect on our health. According to the latest American Time Use Survey from the Bureau of Labor statistics, the average American now watches 3 hours and 21 minutes of TV per day on the weekend and 2 hours and 36 minutes per day during the week. This survey includes people who don’t watch TV at all, so in reality, many are watching much more than this.
The website tiii.me allows people to enter in a TV show, and based on the number of episodes in the series, it will tell you exactly how long it will take to finish it. The Washington Post put together this chart based on the data to show how long it takes for some of the more popularly binge-watched shows.
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I won’t lie. I’m a big fan of binge-watching when it comes to the shows I don’t necessarily have access to until they’re online or ones I wasn’t aware of until after they were off the air. Binge-watching gives us the ability to get connected to plots and characters in a different, more personal way.
But should we try to keep this to a minimum, for our health?
As The Huffington Post pointed out, binge-watching can resemble other addictive behaviors as an escape and coping mechanism, which can then affect our lives in other ways. “People who tried to forget about their anxieties by watching television had a 4 percent increased risk of developing insomnia, found one recent study.”
In addition to that, watching a certain show for long periods of time can have a real impact on how we view the real world, which depending on the show (Breaking Bad or The Wire, for example), might not do us any favors.
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But it goes beyond mental health. According to Lilian Cheung, lecturer and director, health promotion and communication for the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health, the aspect of sitting for long periods of time can definitely take a toll.
“There’s convincing evidence in adults that the more television people watch, the more likely they are to gain weight or become overweight or obese,” Cheung told NBCNews.com last year. “And there’s emerging evidence that too much TV watching also increases the risk of weight-related chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes.”
But there’s a silver lining. Cheung also pointed out that binge-watching allows us to skip fast food commercials, which is a big factor between watching TV traditionally and obesity.
There are pluses and minuses to the phenomenon. A common phrase that will never stop being true is probably in order: Everything in moderation.
This sketch from Portlandia provides a perfect example of how binge-watching can go slightly overboard.
Photo: Flickr user Bruno Melnic Incáo
