According to the Nielsen Total Audience Report, adults spend over 11 hours per day interacting with media on screens (2018). Cindy Holland, vice president for original content at Netflix, revealed that the average Netflix subscriber spends two hours a day on the streaming service (Clark, 2019). The consequences for human health are not rosy; for example neuroimaging research has shown that too much screen time actually damages the human brain; its overall ability to function and it also shrinks in size (Dunckley, 2014). This clearly indicates the importance of spending time ‘offline’, but most traditional hobbies now seem to be replaced by digital ones. Did Netflix contribute to the murder of hobbies?
A hobby is one of the few activities where you can totally shut yourself off. That is valuable time because you allow yourself to withdraw from the hectic pace of work for a while and that happens too little in recent years, says Ap Dijksterhuis, professor of psychology at Radboud University in Nijmegen who is specialized in happiness. “That lack of recovery is the number 1 cause of the burnout epidemic.” (Dijksterhuis, 2015)
Flow discoverer Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian-American psychologist, calls it “the optimal human experience.” People who get into flow more often are structurally happier than people who are rarely or never in that state. You achieve flow according to Csikszentmihalyi if you perform a task that you control, with full focus, with a clear goal in mind, on which you are able to receive direct feedback, where you experience no headaches and which allows you to forget about the time (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).
Netflix and the smartphone are particularly unsuitable for flow. Due to all incoming messages and easily accessible distractions, you rarely achieve the focus needed for flow behind a screen. Active time use such as playing a musical instrument or doing something that makes you move makes flow much easier (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).
Another important element in which real hobbies are winning is that it makes you happy if you make progress in something, in which you can noticeably improve. Mastery, in psychology terms. This is the case with almost all hobbies, from kite surfing to knitting (Nietzsche, 2016). No matter how much time you spend Netflixing, you will not get better at it.
Furthermore, it is good for your happiness in life to actively organize your leisure activities, says psychologist Paraskevas Petrou from Erasmus University Rotterdam. He conducts research into so-called leisure crafting, adjusting leisure time to personal wishes and requirements, as opposed to just seeing how the day goes. So deliberately freeing up time for hobbies. According to Petrou, the benefit of leisure crafting is that you continue to learn: “Growth, development, deep contact with other people and ultimately life satisfaction and meaning.” (Paraskevas, 2015)
Hence, actively allowing yourself to recover by performing offline hobbies has shown to positively contribute to the prevention of a burnout and increase happiness in life. Perhaps you already started to consider to cancel your Netflix account and to sign up for pottery classes.
References
Clark, R. (2019). Netflix says its subscribers watch an average of 2 hours a day — here’s how that compares with TV viewing. Retrieved from: https://www.businessinsider.nl/netflix-viewing-compared-to-average-tv-viewing-nielsen-chart-2019-3?international=true&r=US
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Journal of Leisure Research, 24(1), pp. 93–94
Dijksterhuis, A. (2015). ‘Geluk is iets anders dan genot’. Retrieved from: https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/geluk-is-iets-anders-dan-genot~b806210d/?referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
Dunckley, V. (2014). Gray Matters: Too Much Screen Time Damages the Brain. Retrieved from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mental-wealth/201402/gray-matters-too-much-screen-time-damages-the-brain
Nielsen. (2018). Time Flies: U.S. Adults Now Spend Nearly Half a Day Interacting with Media. Retrieved from: https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2018/time-flies-us-adults-now-spend-nearly-half-a-day-interacting-with-media/
Nietzsche, F. (2016). The Psychology and Principles of Mastery. Retrieved from: https://academyofideas.com/2016/11/psychology-principles-mastery/
Paraskevas, P. (2015). Crafting one’s leisure time in response to high job strain. Human Relations. 69 (2). 10.1177/0018726715590453.
Hi Catherine, nice and important post! I think to some extent we all know how detrimental binge-watching can actually be to our health, however, it’s even worse to see it written out (on the screen..). Still, I think two hours per day are actually surprisingly low, maybe because many subscribers actually don’t use Netflix actively? In Germany, people from the age of 14 and onwards are watching linear television 238 minutes per day – this is roughly 4 hours.
Additionally, I found a super interesting article saying, that binge-watching could even affect your diet and cause obesity. On the other hand, one could argue the other way around saying obesity causes a lack of motivation to get active which is why you rather watch a TV show.
https://www.ibtimes.com/sleeping-less-binge-watching-tv-can-lead-poor-diet-studies-find-2639605
https://www.agf.de/daten/tvdaten/sehdauer/
Could not agree more! I appreciate the breadth of arguments you used and I like how you presented Netflix as the opposite of Flow. Taking up hobbies is definitely more beneficial than watching Netflix.
At the same time, as much as we would all like to be as productive as possible, I am also thinking of benefits of doing nothing. As it can give room for clarity and creativity to come in and at the same time rest the body and mind. Maybe a little boredom would not hurt us as much?