Netflix: A Distraction Turns to an Addiction

By Micah Golomb-Leavitt
Features Contributor

Senior James Davis struggles with the same question when he comes home from school each day: To watch or not to watch? Davis then opens his computer. Question answered.

“I’m thinking, ‘I know what I have to do. I know that I should quit out of Google Chrome, right now,’” Davis said. “And then after ten quick seconds of thinking about it, [the episode] just starts playing and there’s nothing I can do because the first ten seconds of it make you wonder what will happen next.”

“On weekends, sometimes [Netflix] just eats hours out of my day. And then sometimes during vacation, it will eat days at a time,” Davis said. “It’s unbelievable. You wake up, and you just need to [binge-watch].”

Davis is just one high-schooler who finds himself piled under heaps of schoolwork trying to find some type of diversion.

In need of a distraction, people increasingly look straight to television-streaming websites like Netflix to help them relax. Many of these people become attached to the shows they watch and consequently put themselves at risk for various harmful short-term and long-term effects from watching so much television.

Senior Henry Hecker* explained a similar relationship with websites that allow you to watch full seasons of shows at a time. “My peak — like when [binge-watching TV] was a real disease — was last year,” he said. “I would watch ‘Friends’ like every day. I watched all ten seasons, I think, in a two-month span.”

As the timer runs down on Netflix until the next episode automatically plays, teenagers often convince themselves that they have time to watch just one more. And then that turns into two more.

“I didn’t even open my backpack. I opened my computer screen and watched Netflix,” Davis said. “Next thing I knew, it was eleven o’clock at night.”

Websites that offer all types of shows and movies with a prescribed membership, like Netflix, are becoming a common source for procrastination among teenagers. Rather than cracking open a textbook right after seven hours of school, high schoolers will crack open their computers and begin to “binge-watch.”

To binge-watch means to watch multiple episodes of a television program in rapid succession — a hands-free, pleasure-giving experience.

One online survey showed that out of 3,000 random people, 61 percent binge-watch regularly. Of those viewers, 79 percent say that streaming a show through websites like Netflix makes the show better overall.

Yet what began as an attractive means of distraction has become a full on addiction. At Newton South, about 60 percent of students use these websites before they are finished with their work and about 35 percent of those students have fallen behind in school at some point because of this ability.

Javier Basterra of the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Navarra in Spain spoke of the real risks of binge-watching TV.

“Television viewing is associated with an increased risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and total mortality, Basterra said. “[I] found that [people] who watch television for three hours or more each day may double their risk of premature death compared to those watching one or less hours.”

Affiliated with the American Heart Association, Basterra said he does not think binge-watching is a good idea. He suggested that people reduce television watching to no longer than one or two hours each day. Other effects of binge-watching include depression and fatigue.

Senior Noa Leiter is also concerned with the dangers of Netflix and sites like it; however, she believes that binge-watching TV can be a good way to relax on occasion. She said that the distraction factor is what is so attractive about Netflix.

“I think you definitely end up watching more TV than you intended to [because] you have access to [many shows],” Leiter said. “It used to be that you had to wait a week for the next one to come out, or pre-record it, which was a pain.”

Leiter feels that binge-watching television becomes addictive and time-consuming, but notes that websites like Netflix are much easier to use than a DVR that records live shows. Who would watch television weekly when they can watch it daily?

“Television viewing is associated with an increased risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and total mortality, Basterra said. “[I] found that [people] who watch television for three hours or more each day may double their risk of premature death compared to those watching one or less hours.”

South senior Rina Rabinovich, though, is not an avid binge-watcher and generally does not watch television at all. “[Sites like Netflix are] used as distractions, and we already have minimal free time with school and extracurriculars,” Rabinovich said. “With the distraction of TV and that on the mind, I feel like it’s hard to attain a lot of information and get work done in the shortest amount of time.”

Rather than aimlessly watching television, Rabinovich participates in extracurricular activities — which she says are useful and productive ways to spend free time.

Rabinovich said that she notices the binge-watching trend often among teenagers, and thinks it personally “distracts [her] from thinking [. . .] and living life basically.”

But teenagers are not the only ones in the habit of watching television continuously. “My father took four days off of work to binge-watch ‘Breaking Bad.’ I’m not kidding,” Davis said. “He missed work because of Netflix.”

Adults are beginning to watch television endlessly, just as teenagers.

“My mom is a very busy woman, but her one slice of enjoyment is to watch ten different shows, and [as a result,] she gets very little sleep,” Hecker said. “I’ll be like, ‘Mom, you’ve been sitting here for hours,’ and she’ll be like, ‘Yeah, I have to pay the bills and do all this stuff.’”

With Netflix and television-streaming websites of the like, it may not be the actual shows that people are so easily drawn to, but the idea of watching episodes one after another.

“I think the whole point with Netflix, is that you kind of lose track of time. [Netflix] automatically goes to the next episode for you,” Hecker said. “You can just sit there.” He admits that he is personally quite attached to Netflix, and currently finds himself lost in the show “Game of Thrones.”

The distraction of television-streaming websites quickly becomes an addiction. Davis says that he has become an absolute addict.

“[With Netflix], it’s the interaction. [TV] is a one-sided thing, but [with Netflix] just like you can’t stop. It makes it so easy,” Davis said. “Should I be doing my Statistics homework right now? Probably. But, look at all these shows I haven’t watched that are so easy, I can just click.”

*name changed to protect students’ identity