In April, a Brooklyn man broke the Guinness World Record for the longest television binge-watching marathon, logging 94 straight hours in front of the TV.
Although that’s an unusually long time to spend watching TV, many Americans — Deloitte estimates 70 percent — admit to binge-watching their favorite shows in one sitting.
It is hard to ignore some of the red flags associated with binge-watching. Perhaps listing them will convince you to get off the couch and do something more productive.
Here are four reasons you may want to eliminate — or at least cut back on — TV-watching marathons:
- Loneliness and depression: These are standard emotions for all bingeing behaviors, including TV binge-watching, reports CNBC.
- Reduced sex: David Spiegelhalter, a professor and statistician at Cambridge University, tells CNBC that binge-watching television shows is at least partially responsible for a drop in the frequency of sex for American couples, from five times a month in the 1990s to three times a month now.
- Decreased pleasure: You may find you don’t enjoy your TV show as much if you’re watching it in a binge marathon. Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, tells Reader’s Digest that this type of reduced pleasure is known as hedonic adaptation. She says:
“You buy something new, but then it gets old. At first, a new TV is really exciting, but the more you watch, the less you enjoy it over time.”
Do you binge-watch your favorite shows? Do you think it has any impact on your health? Share your comments below or on Facebook.
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