Binge watching television series like Game of Thrones could make it make it significantly less enjoyable than watching it on a weekly basis.
New research found watching too much television in one go diminishes the quality of the show with viewers getting ‘significantly less’ enjoyment than those who paced themselves.
Scientists found that although binge-watchers might remember the show the day after, they were unlikely to remember what happened in the long-run.
Scientists found that although binge-watchers might remember the show the day after, they were unlikely to remember what happened in the long-run (stock image)
Research led by the University of Melbourne found how people watch television significantly affects how much enjoyment they get out of it.
‘Binge watching via video-on-demand services is now considered the new ‘normal’ way to consume television programs’, researchers wrote in their paper in peer-reviewed journal First Monday.
‘In fact, recent surveys suggest upwards of 80 per cent of consumers prefer and indulge in binge watching behaviour.’
Researchers found that ‘although binge watching leads to strong memory formation immediately following program viewing, these memories decay more rapidly than memories formed after daily- or weekly-episode viewing schedules.’
The team took 51 students from the university and split them into groups of 17 to watch the BBC Cold War drama The Game over different periods of time.
One group watched one-hour weekly another watched it daily and the other group watched the whole season (six hours) in one sitting, writes Vice.
No participants had previously watched the show and they all watched it in the lab.
Any time a character lit a cigarette or poured a drink they had to press a keyboard to prove that they were concentrating.
They filled out a questionnaire straight after finishing the show, then 24 hours later and then twice a week until 140 days had passed.
The team took 51 students from the university and split them into groups of 17 to watch the BBC Cold War drama The Game over different periods of time
Questions included things like ‘In episode four, what was delivered to Arkady’s secret mailbox?’
People who binge-watched had the best memory the day after the show but this declined sharply from then on.
People who viewed the show weekly remembered the least after 24 hours but then could retain the most information over time.
Weekly viewers also reported enjoying the show more than any of the other groups.
‘It appears that, despite its position as the preferred viewing schedule amongst modern television consumers, binge watching may affect both sustained memory of viewed content and self-reported show enjoyment levels’, researchers wrote.
‘Interestingly, the more traditional daily- and weekly-episode viewing schedules improved sustained memory in an incremental manner, but also differentially impacts self-reported show enjoyment levels.’