It’s 2 a.m. You have been watching the same show for the past few hours and you’ve only got a few more episodes left until the season finale. Half asleep, you hear yourself saying “one more...” as Netflix automatically begins playing the next episode.
Binge-watching--we all do it. We get committed to a show and have to know what happens next. Or we need to catch up on the latest episodes before the new season begins. Or maybe you're just really bored and need something to entertain yourself.
We’ve all heard the binge-watching lecture: it makes you tired, helps you procrastinate, and allows you to ignore the people around you.
Don’t worry--I’m not here to lecture you about why you shouldn’t binge-watch. If you want to stay up all night or sit for hours and watch a TV show, go ahead!
But I have to ask WHY people binge watch. What makes people want to stay up all night watching an entire season of a TV show even though they know that it will mess them up the next day? What goes on in the brain when you watch TV?
In 2003, Robert Kubey and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi published a report called “Television Addiction is No Mere Metaphor”. They found that watching TV has a soothing effect on watchers, and allows them to escape from their frantic workdays. They observed a group of people and saw that within seconds of turning on the TV, they felt more relaxed. Because of the quick reaction that is felt, people associate watching TV with a lack of tension and rest.
Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi also said that TV sparks our "orienting response," a biological response to observe sudden sounds and movements in order to check for potential threats. They found that when a TV show focuses on sudden noises, it triggers this response and keeps us riveted. These responses affect our entire physiology, causing dilation of blood vessels to the brain, slowing of the heart, and the constriction of blood vessels to major muscle groups. Alpha waves are also blocked for a few seconds, which heightens a level of mental arousal. Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi suggest that the reason people find themselves unable to resist watching TV is because of all of this physical stimulation that occurs.
Around the same time, Psychologist Uri Hasson of Princeton University established the field of neurocinematics, the study of how TV and films interact with the brain. In 2008, he conducted an experiment in which he showed a group of people four different clips: Larry David’s "Curb Your Enthusiasm," Sergio Leone’s "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," Alfred Hitchcock’s "Bang! You’re Dead," and a 10-minute video of a concert in New York’s Washington Square Park. He administered MRIs to the participants watching these videos and found that while the concert barely evoked any response in the cortex, the Hitchcock film evoked a 65 percent reaction.
Through this experiment, Hasson found that when a film or TV show controls what you see or tries to make you feel a certain way, it stimulates the brain more. As we know, TV shows do that all the time. They show us things that the other characters don’t know and constantly leave us guessing about what will happen next. They show the hardships that these people are experiencing and pull at our heartstrings, making us feel what these fictional characters are feeling. This stimulates the brain and makes us want to continue watching.
There are many psychological and physiological reasons as to why binge-watching is so addicting. It connects us to the characters by making us feel what they are feeling, it stimulates our brain, and it helps us relax after a long, stressful day.
So, the next time your mother tells you to stop watching your show, tell her that you really can’t even if you wanted to, because you are psychologically programmed to keep watching! Good luck with that argument!
