According a University of Melbourne study, binge-watching not only reduces your ability to remember what you just watched, but it actually decreases your enjoyment of the thing you're cramming down your gullet like a seagull swallowing a hot dog. I could go on about how we should slow down and savor the finer things in life, or I can just point out that the human brain simply physically needs time to process things.
Think about it. How many times has your opinion of a movie or show changed only after you had some time to stew on it? A plot turn that feels like an emotional punch in the gut loses its impact when you're immediately onto the next episode. "Wow, that was quite a twist! I wonder what will- Oh wait, they're resolving it right now. OK."
Of course, there's the even more obvious fact that sitting alone on a butt-sweat-dampened couch working your way through 552 minutes of Umbrella Academy just isn't good for you. Binge-watching has been connected to poor diet and obesity. Also, sitting in front of a flickering rectangle until three in the morning is, shockingly, a recipe for sleep deprivation, which the CDC and WHO have declared an outright epidemic. So yeah, it turns out there may have been a reason the term "binge" had nothing but negative connotations until marketers branded it cool five years ago.
But part of the reason we can't give it up is ...
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