I stay up later than I should binge watching Friday Night Lights on Netflix, and I’m sure I’m not alone with that habit. I’ll start watching and then before I know it I’m already on my 4th or 5th episode. I’ve started to wonder what this does to my brain! I decided to research it and look at the science behind my bad habit.

According to the Huffington Post, a survey that Netflix conducted from December concluded that “61 percent of about 1,500 online respondents say that they binge-watch TV regularly (which was defined as watching between two and six episodes of the same TV show in one sitting)”. Sitting and watching that many tv shows can slow your circulation and also slow down your metabolism, both bad for your health.

After reading an article from Refinery29, I learned that humans have actually “evolved” to watch this much television. This source says that “Television’s continuously changing visual and audio stimulation triggers our ‘orienting response'”. This orienting response is defined as the extra time and attention that we give to anything new in our lives.

After reading more from this website I learned that during the first half hour of watching Netflix,  your brain activity goes from left to right. This means that it goes from the left hemisphere to the right hemisphere from the state of REASON to the state of EMOTION. This causes the brain to release endorphins!

The next time I’m binge watching Friends or Friday Night Lights I will think about how I learned that binge watching TV actually isn’t all that bad for you