Binge-watching could make TV shows less enjoyable, research finds

Binge-watching your favourite television shows might actually make them less enjoyable.

It could also affect how well you remember what happened — with binge-watchers forgetting the show’s content more quickly than weekly viewers.

“Binge-watching does not appear to benefit sustained memory of viewed content and may affect show enjoyment,” the research team from the University of Melbourne said.

The study involved 51 graduate and undergraduate students from the university, who were asked to watch the six, one-hour episodes of BBC America’s cold war drama The Game.

They were put into one of three groups — the weekly viewers, the daily viewers, and the binge-watchers.

During the episodes, the participants had to press the space bar on a keyboard every time a character lit a cigarette or poured a drink, to prove they were concentrating.

After the final episode, they were asked to fill in a questionnaire, then another 24 hours later, then again twice a week until 140 days had passed.

Binge-watchers remembered most about the content the day after they had finished watching, but showed the steepest decline of any of the groups over the following 140 days.

Weekly viewers remembered least after 24 hours, but were able to retain the information for longest — and reported enjoying the show more than any of the others.