Addicted To Netflix? Stop As It Causes Poor Sleep And Fatigue

Studies reveal that binge-watching television can cause poor sleep quality, fatigue and even insomnia in youngsters. Though lack of sleep and insomnia can be owed to a number of other reasons, there is 98% chance that you might be suffering from it due to binge-watching. As per researchers, this habit leads to intellectual alertness before going to sleep. Intellectual alertness is when you are unable to forget about the show you just watched which keeps your mind engaged in thoughts. As a result, a disturbed mind does not allow your body to rest. 

Binge-watching can be defined as a habit of watching a couple of episodes of a particular show in one go on a TV or any screen like laptop or on the phone over an extended period of time. 

On an average, a binge-watching session lasts to 3 hours and 8 minutes. It was revealed that more than 80% of youngsters agreed that they are binge-watchers and 20.2% of them did so a couple of times a week in the previous month. 

Youngsters who identified themselves as binge-watchers reported the following:-

Higher levels of the symptoms of insomnia

 Fatigue

 Inability to sleep due to cognitive alertness.

Liese Exelmans a doctoral candidate at the University of Leuven in Belgium said "We found that the more often young people binge-watch, the higher their cognitive pre-sleep arousal." 

"That in turn negatively affected sleep quality, fatigue and insomnia," reveals Exelmans, lead author of the study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. 

This study included 423 youngsters, between 18 to 25 years of age. 62% of them were women and 74% were students. All of them were asked to complete an online survey assessing TV viewing, binge-watching, sleep-deprivation and fatigue. 

"Bingeable shows often have a complex narrative structure that makes viewers become completely immersed into the story," says Prof. Jan Van den Bulck, from the University of Michigan. 

Van den Bulck says "This intense engagement with television content could require a longer period to 'cool down' before going to sleep, thus affecting sleep overall."

On the basis of this research, it was stated that in order to reduce mind-alertness before going to sleep, one must try to relax their mind by some way or the other to end problems related to binge-watching.