How Do You Binge-Watch?
The engagement, the emotions, and the small rituals around watching a whole season in one go
Watching several episodes in one sitting is now the normal way most people watch television, and the research on it has moved past treating it as one thing. There turns out to be a real difference between getting swept up in a story, feeling good while you do it, looking forward to the next episode all day, and guarding the experience so nothing spoils it. Most people are high on some of these and unremarkable on others.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Answer about a TV series you have genuinely binge-watched, not about television in general.
What it measures
Four of the seven subscales of the Binge-Watching Engagement and Symptoms Questionnaire: engagement (getting absorbed in the story), positive emotions (feeling good during a binge), desire-savoring (looking forward to and wanting to prolong the experience) and pleasure preservation (protecting the experience from spoilers or bad timing). The other three subscales of that same questionnaire - including dependency and loss of control, which describe problematic use - are deliberately left out here; this test is about the everyday experience of binge-watching, not a screening for it. It differs from our phone-habit and social-media-type tests, which are about checking devices and platforms rather than watching a story.
Based on: Binge-Watching Engagement and Symptoms Questionnaire (Flayelle et al., 2019) - engagement subscales only
Possible results
Engagement
How absorbed you get in the story and characters.
Positive emotions
How good you feel during and after a binge-watching session.
Desire-savoring
How much you look forward to and want to prolong the experience.
Pleasure preservation
How much you protect the experience from spoilers, interruptions or the wrong mood.
Common questions
Is binge-watching the same as being addicted to TV?
No. The published research separates ordinary engagement, enjoyment and savoring - the everyday side measured here - from a smaller set of items about dependency and loss of control, which describe a different pattern. Studies that cluster binge-watchers by their answers find that most people land in ordinary, enthusiastic-but-fine groups, not in the problematic ones.
Is it bad to watch a whole season in one weekend?
Not by itself. The research links this kind of viewing mostly to positive emotion and engagement with a good story. What tends to matter more is whether it displaces sleep, work or things you actually needed to do - the amount watched matters less than what it is replacing.
Why do I sometimes feel a bit low after finishing a series?
That flat feeling after the last episode is common and is close to what the research calls the end of desire-savoring: the anticipation that gave the series part of its pull is suddenly gone, along with the characters' company. It usually passes on its own within a day or two, and starting something new too fast can be a way of avoiding it rather than actually feeling better.
Sources
- Flayelle, M., Canale, N., Vögele, C., Karila, L., Maurage, P., & Billieux, J. (2019). Assessing binge-watching behaviors: Development and validation of the "Watching TV Series Motives" and "Binge-watching Engagement and Symptoms" questionnaires. Computers in Human Behavior. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2018.08.022
- Flayelle, M., Maurage, P., Karila, L., Vögele, C., & Billieux, J. (2019). Overcoming the unitary exploration of binge-watching: A cluster analytical approach. Journal of Behavioral Addictions. doi:10.1556/2006.8.2019.53
An honest note These statements are Quinthea's own wording, adapted from four of the seven subscales of the Binge-Watching Engagement and Symptoms Questionnaire, so scores are not comparable to the published norms. The other three subscales of that same questionnaire - including dependency and loss of control, which describe problematic viewing - are deliberately left out: this test is about the everyday experience of binge-watching, not a screening for a disorder, and a high score here is not a warning sign by itself.