Binge Watching and Clinical Depression- One Harbinger for Another?

Abstract

Television is one of our most preferred forms of entertainment. Due to the emergence of smartphones and online streaming platforms television is now in our hands and pockets constantly. Depression may be positively related to television viewing affinity. Individuals higher in depression were more likely to binge- watch television shows out of comfort seeking. It also seemed possible that individuals who had higher in depression lack the motivation or cognitive energy to resist the auto- play functions of streaming products. Viewers tend to binge watch more in order to forget temporarily about every day life stress due to work and social life that are the hallmark of many depressive episodes.Still ,the cause and effect relationship could not be established properly;it is not known whether the depressed people tend to binge-watch more for the reasons mentioned or the binge watching leads to depression. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that both depression and binge watching in many ways can be prelude for the other. So, it is plausible to conduct further studies on pathophysiology of binge watching and depression and to find the core behind the link between them. KEYWORDS: Binge-watching, Depression, Smart phones

Gender Differences in Binge-Watching by Teenagers: A Uses and Gratification Analysis

“…Another major drawback of binging is the risk of goal conflict, resulting in the viewers feeling guilt and shame for having missed their time (Granow et al, 2018;Riddle et al, 2017). Halder et al (2021) observed that viewers binge more often to forget the stress in their everyday lives, and they did find correlations between binging and depression though they could not establish whether depressed people tend to bingewatch more or that binge-watching leads to depression. However, there is some other research suggesting the complete opposite.…”