There's little doubt that Americans are very attached to their TV screens. The government has even declared TV-watching to be one of the most common leisure activities.
And now, thanks to on-demand streaming, there's little to stop us from indulging in that TV habit.
But based on a study by Jessica Sloan Kruger, binge-watchers may pay a price for wallowing in their favorite show. Kruger is a doctoral student in the Department of Public Health at the University of Toronto.
Kruger and her co-authors surveyed 406 adults they recruited online, and found a correlation between binge-watching and higher rates of stress, anxiety, and depression.
"We can say they're correlated, but we don't know the direction yet. More studies need to be done," Kruger says. "Currently we know that there's a relationship, but we don't know if people are depressed and then watch TV, or watch TV and then are depressed."
Jessica Sloan Kruger tells us more about the study in our conversation above.
