The rise of binge - watching: a cultural revolution or a fading trend?

After a long day at work, you come back at 6 pm, slip into your pajamas, put on Netflix, and watch our series with our favorite plaid. Enjoying this moment, you are starting a second episode and a third and suddenly you cannot stop anymore, you look at the time and it is already 11 pm. This might have happened to you before and it has a name: binge-watching.

This expression comes from another phenomenon, binge drinking, the excessive consumption of alcohol. For binge-watching, it’s the same thing. The excessive consumption of episodes, when you can’t stop watching, and you binge a season in one week; the average is around 2 to 6 following episodes. This televisual marathon touches more series with a lot of suspense, with big cliffhangers, which will completely immerse the viewer in a fictional world. Moreover, with the rise of a lot of streaming platforms this last decade (Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, OCS…) binge-watching has increased. Their accessibility on all supports, TV, phone, and computer makes binge-watching easier at every moment of the day, wherever you want. The consumer will pay to subscribe to their platforms, to have access to a hundred shows, often with the complete seasons (instead of having to wait one week to watch the remaining episodes). Covid 19 intensified binge-watching: Netflix had 190 million subscribers in 2020.

However, binge-watching can develop into an addiction. Several researchers in sociology and psychology did studies on the subject to understand why people started binge-watching and what kind of impact (negative or positive) it had on their mental and physical health. Binge-watching can cause different symptoms, that share similarities with a depressive episode or even lead to it; negligence in work and social relationships; a lack of sleep; procrastination; weight gain and bad alimentation; and even stress and anxiety. The binge-watching addiction resembles addictions to video games or social media, it concerns the young majority between 18-35 years.

During their investigation, researchers discovered some positive effects. The platform’s users will binge-watch their series to a point of dissociating from reality: forgetting their work’s problems and escaping their loneliness.

They will identify themselves as the series’ characters. People are also binge-watching their favorite series because they’re scared of spoilers. Furthermore, consumers also stated in the study that they’re watching series in an attempt to just relax and chill; it’s in this case that the expression “Netflix and chill” will appear in our discussions and become the best way to bingewatch. The article “Let’s stay home and watch TV: The benefits of shared media use for close relationships” evokes all the advantages of binge-watching as a couple. For relationships that don’t have a common social network or a long-distance relationship, bingewatching could be a possibility to share a social experience between them, even if it’s fictional. But be careful to not lose yourself in a fictional world like Game of Thrones, you will be surprised to not see dragons in reality…

Binge-watching does not only impact the subscribers of streaming platforms but also big media industries like television or cinema. For a decade, television has competed with Netflix and other platforms, thanks to the broad variety of programs. Especially because the seasons are suddenly coming out all at once. In addition to that, the absence of ads and no scheduled hours are also beneficial to the users.

The cinema industry seems to be affected by this increase in bingewatching, many people working in the field of cinema, like producers or directors, are protesting the streaming platforms’ influence; and Covid19 didn’t help as well. We can observe a decrease in attendance at movie theaters, for some people the social effect of going to the cinema and watching a movie is not worth it anymore. The idea is to share a cinematographic experience with perfect strangers and feel some emotions and sensations in front of a film that is constantly industrialization. The streaming platforms also understood the rising enthusiasm behind this new way of consuming series very well; a lot of series are produced at once, and quantity is prioritized over quality.

To conclude, these last years there has been hard competition between all the streaming platforms, new ones appeared on the market, fighting for their establishment while older ones are trying to refresh their image. Prices are changing, and subscribers have become more occasional (particularly for Netflix). Are we starting to see the end of the binge-watching era or the beginning of cinema’s revenge? I personally will continue my abonnement for Netflix to watch “Vikings” and “Stranger Things” with my plaid at 6 pm on a rainy Monday.

Chloé Le Cair

Sources: losing popularity. In that way, bingewatching, in my opinion, can lead to social isolation.

So, when I talk about binge-watching, I must talk about the circumstances while producing series nowadays. Employees are forced to keep a tight schedule and work at an intense pace, which causes stress and anxiety for the people who work in professions in the media industry and even leads to burnout. In this new numeric era, we can see the appearance of writing

Passeportsante: Binge Watching: décryptage de cette tendance de consommation

Mdpi: Understanding the Phenomenon of BingeWatching - A Systematic Review

University of Aberdeen: Let’s stay home and watch TV: The benefits of shared media use for close relationships

Cairn.info: Netflix, l’usine à séries que le cinéma déteste adorer