Is Binge-Watching Bad for You? What the Research Shows

Is binge-watching bad for you? Not in itself. Studies link frequent or hard-to-control binge-watching with poorer sleep, more stress, anxiety and loneliness, and long hours of sitting with blood clots. But nearly all of this research is cross-sectional, and planned binges look harmless or even good for your mood. How you binge matters more than whether you do.

Below are the studies behind those answers, read in the papers rather than the headlines, including studies from 2025 and a 2026 editorial by researchers in the field. For each, we give who was studied, what was measured and what the study cannot show. We make Omniphile, an app for tracking shows and films, not medicine, and nothing here is medical advice.

How strong is the evidence that binge-watching is bad for you?

Researchers don’t agree on what counts as a binge. Many define it as watching several consecutive episodes of the same show in one sitting; others set a threshold such as five hours of viewing in a row. Some studies count how often people binge, while others measure “problematic” binge-watching, with questions about cravings and losing control, which is a different thing from simply watching a lot.

Most of the research is a single survey taken at one moment. In 2026, three researchers who study the subject wrote that the field is “strongly dominated by cross-sectional survey studies.”¹ Such a survey can find that people who binge more also report more stress, but not which came first: people who are stressed, lonely or sleeping badly may turn to a series to cope. The same editorial concludes that binge-watching “is not inherently good or bad,” and that its effects depend on the person and the situation.¹

Is binge-watching bad for your mental health?

The broadest summary is a 2022 meta-analysis of 16 studies with 8,077 participants aged 18 to 68, from the United States, the Netherlands, Turkey, India and seven other countries. All 16 were cross-sectional. Binge-watching was linked with all five problems the authors looked at, with average correlations of 0.32 for stress, 0.25 for anxiety, 0.19 for loneliness, 0.16 for insomnia and 0.14 for depression.² The authors call the depression link weak; stress showed the strongest.

The depression link needs a caveat. In studies done before the COVID-19 pandemic, it was close to zero and not statistically significant (0.05); only in the three studies done during the pandemic was it clear (0.28).² A time when many people were isolated, anxious and at home may explain both the bingeing and the low mood.

Two 2025 studies point the same way:

• Adults in Turkey. An online survey of 894 adults who used streaming services regularly, 70.8% of them aged 18 to 24, measured problematic binge-watching with a 20-item questionnaire about craving and dependence. Higher scores went with more symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress (a correlation of 0.46), more anxiety in social situations (0.44) and more loneliness (0.27).³ The authors note that they cannot say whether bingeing leads to these problems “or vice versa.”
• Children and teenagers in Hong Kong. A school survey of 2,267 students in primary and secondary schools found that 47.1% had watched screens for five or more hours in a row at least once in the past month. Those who had done so reported more depression, anxiety, stress and loneliness, and less confidence in their schoolwork, in boys and girls alike.⁴ It was a convenience sample of ten schools, and the authors list the design’s limits, including no control for prior mental health.

Does binge-watching affect sleep?

The clearest sleep study surveyed 423 adults aged 18 to 25, recruited through Facebook by researchers at KU Leuven in Belgium. Eight in ten called themselves binge viewers. Binge viewers had 98% higher odds of poor sleep quality, and the more often people binged, the worse their sleep, the more tired they felt and the more insomnia symptoms they reported. Ordinary TV viewing showed no such link.⁵

What explained it was “cognitive pre-sleep arousal”: a mind still busy with the story at bedtime. The more engaging the series, the harder it can be to switch off, which is the point of a cliffhanger. The authors note that their survey can’t rule out the reverse, people who sleep badly filling their nights with episodes.⁵

In the 2025 Hong Kong study, binge-watching went with poorer sleep in boys but not in girls.⁴

Is binge-watching bad for your brain and memory?

No study we found shows that binge-watching harms the brain, but it may change what you remember. In a 2017 experiment at the University of Melbourne, 51 university students watched the six episodes of the BBC drama The Game in one sitting, one a day or one a week.⁶ The binge group remembered the show well right afterwards, but its memories faded faster: 140 days later, its recall had fallen the most. The binge group also enjoyed the show less.⁷ It was a small study of one series.

A 2025 study found something that looks like the opposite. Shows and books taken in over longer stretches were more memorable, and more likely to be stories people kept imagining long after they finished them.⁸ The two measure different things: recalling details of the plot, against how much a story stays with you. Both can be true.

Total viewing time is a separate question. In a study of 3,590 adults over 50 in England, followed for six years, watching more than 3.5 hours of TV a day was linked to a decline in verbal memory that grew with viewing time; watching less was not.⁹ It looked at daily TV time, not binges, and it is observational. You may also read that binge-watching floods the brain with dopamine. None of the studies above measured dopamine; it is a plausible idea, not a finding.

Is binge-watching bad for your health in other ways?

The best-documented physical risk is sitting still for hours. A 2022 meta-analysis pooled three long-term studies of 131,421 adults aged 40 and over, followed for 5.1 to 19.8 years, during which 964 developed a blood clot in a vein. People who watched TV for 4 hours a day or more had a 35% higher risk than those who watched under 2.5 hours, even after accounting for physical activity, age, sex and body mass index.¹⁰

Being active the rest of the day did not remove the link, which points at the hours of stillness. The researchers stress that observational studies “do not prove that extended TV watching causes blood clots,” and that three studies are not many. Their advice for a binge: stand and stretch every 30 minutes.¹¹

Is binge-watching ever good for you?

It can be. A 2025 study asked 180 people to recall a recent session in which they had watched several episodes in a row, either one they had planned or one that just happened. Planned sessions were linked with good moods and satisfaction; unplanned ones with conflict with other goals, and with guilt. The unplanned sessions were driven more by cliffhangers and curiosity, and less by social reasons or a wish to learn something.¹²

Another 2025 study followed people’s real viewing, tracking what they watched and asking them how they felt before and after each session. Binge sessions did not lower self-control or well-being compared with ordinary sessions.¹³ And in the 2025 memorability study above, stories taken in over longer stretches stayed with people longer, which the authors suggest might help them recover from daily stress.⁸

What it means for you

• Decide before you press play. The difference between a good binge and a bad one, in the 2025 research, was whether it was planned. Pick a number of episodes, or an end time, first.
• Turn off autoplay if you can. Researchers link autoplay and cliffhangers to unplanned binges.¹ If your streaming service has a setting for it, switching it off puts the choice of another episode back with you.
• Leave a gap before bed. The sleep study traced the problem to a busy mind at bedtime, so end with time to wind down rather than straight after a cliffhanger.⁵
• Stand up every 30 minutes. The blood-clot link points at sitting still for hours, and the researchers suggest standing and stretching every 30 minutes.¹¹
• Notice why you are watching. Bingeing to avoid something, losing sleep to it, or feeling guilty afterwards are the patterns this research links with problems. If that sounds familiar, cutting back is worth a try, and a doctor is the right person to talk to about mood or sleep.

None of this is a reason to give up a long weekend with a good series. For a movie night, our Halloween movie marathon guide shows how to time a lineup with breaks built in.

Seeing how much you watch

You can’t change a habit you can’t see. Omniphile, our app for iPhone and iPad, tracks shows episode by episode, logs each watch with its date, and turns your history into statistics with charts and heatmaps, so a week of bingeing shows up as a week of bingeing. It’s free, with an optional Premium tier, and it imports a history from Trakt, IMDb or a TV Time export. If you need something on Android or the web, our guide to the best TV show tracker apps covers the options. A log won’t make bingeing healthier, but it shows you when a planned binge has turned into a habit.

Sources

1. Wirz DS, Billieux J, Flayelle M (2026), “Towards a psychological approach to on-demand TV series streaming and binge-watching (editorial)”, Acta Psychologica 266: 106979. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2026.106979 ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. Alimoradi Z, Jafari E, Potenza MN, Lin C-Y, Wu C-Y, Pakpour AH (2022), “Binge-Watching and Mental Health Problems: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis”, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19(15): 9707. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19159707 ↩ ↩²

3. Özkent Y, Akdoğan Y (2025), “Relationships between problematic binge-watching behavior with psychological and social states”, BMC Public Health 25: 2309. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-025-23422-8 ↩

4. Tse N, Pang NS-N, Wang X, Li Y, Lo CK-M, Yang X (2025), “Binge-watching and gender-specific effects on academic, social, and mental well-being in children and adolescents”, PLOS ONE 20(8): e0329655. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0329655 ↩ ↩²

5. Exelmans L, Van den Bulck J (2017), “Binge Viewing, Sleep, and the Role of Pre-Sleep Arousal”, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine 13(8): 1001–1008. https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.6704 ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. “Research finds binge-watching affects your long-term memory”, SBS News, 2017, on the University of Melbourne study’s design. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/research-finds-binge-watching-affects-your-long-term-memory/gjxj1qctd ↩

7. Horvath JC, Horton AJ, Lodge JM, Hattie JAC (2017), “The impact of binge watching on memory and perceived comprehension”, First Monday 22(9). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v22i9.7729 ↩

8. Baldwin J, Ulusoy E, Durfee M, Busselle R, Ewoldsen DR (2025), “Watching one more episode and reading one more chapter: What entertainment contexts lead to retrospective imaginative involvement?”, Acta Psychologica 257: 105101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2025.105101 ↩ ↩²

9. Fancourt D, Steptoe A (2019), “Television viewing and cognitive decline in older age: findings from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing”, Scientific Reports 9: 2851. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-39354-4 ↩

10. Kunutsor SK, Dey RS, Laukkanen JA (2022), “Television viewing and venous thrombo-embolism: a systematic review and meta-analysis”, European Journal of Preventive Cardiology 29: 239–242. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurjpc/zwab220 ↩

11. University of Bristol, “TV watching linked with potentially fatal blood clots”, press release, January 2022. https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2022/january/tv-and-clots.html ↩ ↩²

12. Ulusoy E, Wirz DS, Eden A, Ellithorpe ME (2025), “Boundaries on a binge: Explicating the role of intentionality in binge-watching motivations and problematic outcomes”, Acta Psychologica 252: 104666. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2024.104666 ↩

13. Möri M, Fahr A (2025), “Restorative or detrimental? The complex relationship between binge-watching, self-control, and well-being”, Acta Psychologica 259: 105370. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2025.105370 ↩