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A study conducted in China found that feelings of loneliness are associated with binge-watching addiction. Analyses revealed that escapism and emotional enhancement motives significantly contribute to binge-watching addiction as well. The paper was published in PLOS One.
Binge-watching addiction is a problematic pattern of watching many episodes of a TV series or online video content in one sitting in a way that becomes difficult to control. It is not simply enjoying a series or watching several episodes occasionally. It becomes problematic when a person repeatedly watches longer than intended and feels unable to stop despite wanting to.
People may binge-watch to relax, escape stress, avoid unpleasant emotions, reduce loneliness, or delay responsibilities. Over time, this can interfere with sleep, studying, work, physical activity, social life, or family obligations. A person may feel guilt, tiredness, irritability, or loss of control after long viewing sessions. Streaming platforms can make this easier because episodes start automatically and whole seasons are available at once.
Study authors Xiaofan Yue and Xin Cui conducted a study exploring the association between loneliness and binge-watching addiction. They hypothesized that lonely individuals would be more prone to binge-watching addiction, but not to non-problematic binge-watching. They defined loneliness as a state characterized by “feelings of social detachment and a dearth of meaningful connections.” They noted that loneliness often drives individuals to seek solace in compensatory consumption, serving as a coping mechanism to alleviate the emotional void.
Study participants were 551 adults from various regions across China. Forty-five percent of them were male, and their ages ranged between 18 and over 50 years. To be included in the study, participants had to be binge-watchers, defined as answering affirmatively to the question, “Do you watch TV series for over 3.5 hours and more than 4 episodes in one sitting during the past week, and consider yourself to spend a significant amount of time watching TV series?”
Based on their survey responses regarding symptoms like loss of control and neglect of responsibilities, the researchers split the participants into two groups: 334 were classified as having a binge-watching addiction, and 217 were classified as non-problematic binge-watchers.
The study participants completed a survey that asked for demographic data and contained assessments of binge-watching addiction (using the Problematic Series Watching Scale), escapism and emotional enhancement motivations (the Watching TV Series Motives Questionnaire), and loneliness (the UCLA Loneliness Scale).
As the researchers hypothesized, loneliness was not a significant predictor of viewing habits for the non-problematic binge-watchers. However, among those classified as having an addiction, individuals reporting higher levels of loneliness tended to score higher on the assessment of binge-watching addiction. Lonelier individuals also tended to report higher emotional enhancement and escapism motives.
As assessed in this study, escapism motivation means watching a series to avoid, forget, or distract oneself from real-life problems and negative feelings (a negative reinforcement). Emotional enhancement motivation means watching a series to intensify, improve, or regulate one’s emotional state, such as seeking excitement, comfort, pleasure, or mood improvement (a positive reinforcement).
Further analyses revealed that it is highly probable that loneliness increases emotional enhancement and escapism motivations, which, in turn, increase binge-watching addiction. In fact, the researchers found that these two emotional regulation pathways fully explain the relationship between loneliness and binge-watching addiction. When both escapism and emotional enhancement were accounted for in the statistical model, the direct link between loneliness and addiction became non-significant, meaning the effect of loneliness is entirely transmitted through the desire to escape and enhance emotions.
“These findings refine theoretical models of maladaptive media use by illustrating how binge-watching addiction may serve as a behavioral emotion regulation strategy for coping with loneliness via both negative reinforcement and positive enhancement,” the study authors concluded.
The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the links between binge-watching addiction and loneliness. However, it should be noted that the cross-sectional design of this study does not allow any definitive causal inferences to be derived from the results. Furthermore, the study focused only on traditional TV series and did not include short-form video streaming platforms like TikTok, which may present different addiction dynamics.
The paper, “Binge-watching addiction as an emotion regulation way of coping loneliness,” was authored by Xiaofan Yue and Xin Cui.