You’re Not Alone In Binge Watching: Half Of Netflix Users Finished Shows Within One Week

Like heroin. Or meth, I suppose.

Like heroin. Or meth, I suppose.

It’s not just you and your friends exchanging stories of That One Time I Spent Three Straight Days Watching An Entire Season Of Breaking Bad To Catch Up Before The Finale. Everyone does it, or at least, about half of the users Netflix studied are binge watching as well.

Netflix announced today that it found the same pattern of binge watching over and over again: About half of the viewers watching stuff on Netflix finished an entire season within one week. That’s up to 22 episodes.

“Our viewing data shows that the majority of streamers would actually prefer to have a whole season of a show available to watch at their own pace,” said Ted Sarandos, chief content officer of Netflix in a statement (via the Wall Street Journal).

As if you didn’t already realize it while chatting with friends about how Orange Is The New Black is too good to watch and then turn off, this information shows that maybe bingeing is just how we do things now. Why hold yourself back from the next episode when it’s just waiting for you to click play? It’s not like you’re doing anything else tonight.

Being a show binger is cool now anyway, as viewers called themselves bingers whether they were watching three episodes in a row or 13.

For its bit of research, Netflix said it looked at subscribers who watched “currently popular” shows available on Netflix. That means not just say, Netflix original series like House of Cards, but broadcast and cable series. It’s not saying which ones, but did add that at least one of its own series was included.

But there’s only so much content we can handle — Netflix also found that most of the viewers only vanished completely into one show at a time, instead of several at the same time. A brain can get full, you know. Not that that’s keeping any of us from trying to fill it with tasty, tasty entertainment.

Netflix Says Binge Viewing is No ‘House of Cards’ [The Wall Street Journal]

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