People need to relieve their stress after a hard day at work or school. A vast majority of them prefer sitting down in front of a computer and watching TV series’ episodes consecutively to relax,which is called “binge-watching”. Although there are various streaming services, Netflix is the most commonly used one. Because binge-watching becomes prevalent around the world, university students are getting interested in Netflix day by day. Most of the university students say that Netflix helps them to have a great time and feel relaxed, but according to many recent researches, contrary to what university students believe, Netflix is harmful for them. I am of the opinion that Netflix has some negative effects on university students.
To begin with, binge-watching on Netflix affects the undergraduates’ mental health and psychology adversely. For example, while binge-watching, our brain supposes that what we are doing is an enjoyable activity. Then, it says “This feels good.”and comunicates to the body to keep this engagement continued. Because of this huge demand to maintain the action, hours roll by without understanding. For instance, according to the Netflix survey, 61 percent of its users regularly watch between 2-6 episodes in one sitting. Also, many researches have revealed that binge-watching can transform into an addiction. As an illustration, Dr.Renee Carr, a clinical psychologist, is one of the researches,”When binge-watch your favourite show, your brain is continually producing dopamine, and your body experiences drug-like high. You experience a pseudo-addiction to the show because you develop cravings for dopamine.” she explains. Besides, the addiction can also push the binge-watchers into depression when all episodes were watched. As Dr.John Mayer has said that we often go into a state of depression because of the loss we are experiencing. In this respect, I think we must decrease the amount of use Netflix to keep our psychology healthy.
In the second place, Netflix has unfavorable impacts upon university students’ sociability especially because of overuse Netflix. By the way of illustration, in fact, 361.000 people watched whole the second season of Stranger Things on the first day it was shown. This action is spreading around the world from day to day, and it causes people disconnect from each other and spend their times individually. For university students, this is really unfavourable change because they have to be interactive. Hence, they are being dull and there is lack of emotions more and more.
Another reason why I disagree about the benefits of Netflix is that it is a threat for human health. I mean, you just sit down during the day and thus, you move less than necessary to stay healthy. Synchronously binge-watching, you also eat something. Because of these, you turn into a coach-potato and that means you are nearly obese. In other words, over binge-watching can cause you to catch obesity.
Taking everything into account, although most people including university students believe that Netflix is a stress reliever and have positive effects, I think it has really detrimental impacts on university students. Its effects are mostly related to their psychology, social life, and health. I strongly believe that if we cannot take the increasing use of Netflix under control, we will probably struggle with more severe psychological, social and health problems.