Do you binge watch? Run marathons on Facebook? Are you glued to your Nintendo Switch? We’re in the midst of the holidays and with them comes a lot of free time. What you choose to do with your free time may take a toll on your mental health.
We often hear parents lamenting or limiting their kids’ “screentime.” But excessive screentime is a real problem for adults, too.
Binge watching on Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime is quite the temptation. And checking Facebook and Twitter incessantly, not to mention Snapchat, WhatsApp, and TikTok has become a favorite pastime for many of us.
On average, adults stare at screens for a whopping 11 hours a day.
A 2017 study said that watching six or more hours of video a day is associated with a higher risk of depression.
Screentime among kids more than seven hours a day can result in anxiety and depression, according to this study.
Furthermore, according to the study, kids with overzealous screentime were easily distracted, had more problems finishing tasks, were less emotionally stable, and had a harder time making friends than those who only spent an hour on screens.
If you are an adult who works in front of a computer, and you go home and binge watch or fall down a YouTube rabbit hole, you may be averaging 12 hours or more of screentime every day. That’s half of your life!
And the negative effects of maximized screentime are palpable. Insomnia and low quality sleep, headaches, back pain, and carpal tunnel to name a few.
You can’t binge watch Baby Yoda on The Mandalorian because Disney+ decided to only make one episode available per week. Maybe this is a step forward.
But meanwhile, thousands upon thousands of streaming hours of TV and movies are available at your fingertips. Beware of too much screentime.
I don’t binge watch. Although the excellent new season of Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which won the Emmy last year for Outstanding Comedy Series, is back on, I am not indulging in more than one episode in one sitting. In fact, I only like to watch one episode at a time per night or less. Call me old fashioned, but I like to savor my favorite shows. And just yesterday, I finally finished the third season of the controversial, provocative teen drama 13 Reasons Why, which came out in August.
I am however guilty of Facebooking a couple hours every night. I tend to spin some records while reading my feed. And iPhones will now tell you how much screentime you’ve had in the past week.
Need a New Year’s resolution? How about exposing yourself to less screentime?
