Netflix's Effect On American Culture

Netflix is an online service in which people can watch television shows and movies whenever they would like without the annoying commercial breaks that normal broadcasting includes. In recent years, the number of people who prefer this way of watching television over the traditional way has continued to increase, resulting in less and less people watching live broadcast TV. While it has been proven that Netflix is cheaper than an average television bill, costing only sixteen dollars for a month’s worth of unlimited television shows and movies, too many people are beginning to switch over to this service (Ostrow 1). Also, the availability of an unlimited number of television shows has resulted in a trend of “binge-watching”, otherwise known

Overall, despite its popularity amongst American society, Netflix has become a danger to American culture, causing less people to watch live TV, and has created a phenomenon of binge-watching which harms people's mental and physical health. The more people turn to Netflix for watching television shows and movies, the less they watch broadcast television, and the less money goes back to the television industry as a whole. Since the company’s growth in the twenty first century, it has already damaged the video rental industry as it has been said that, “Netflix has as many subscribers as the country’s largest cable company, and consumers and the business world alike have watched as it thrived while putting video store chains out of business” (Ostrow 1). Specifically, with Netflix having started out as a competing service of renting movies, it quickly became more successful than video chain stores such as Blockbuster, ultimately causing them to go out of business. Due to what the Netflix

In fact, a Netflix survey published in December of 2013 found that sixty one percent of about one-thousand five hundred responders say that they binge-watch television regularly (Pikul 1). The majority of responders to a related survey even described binge-watching as a “welcome refuge from their busy lives” (Stelter 1). However, binge-watching can have some significant negative effects on one’s health. In general, it has been said that, “Lounging slows circulation and metabolism, making you feel sluggish … At the same time, great TV shows, with complicated narratives and emotionally complex characters, are both cognitively and emotionally taxing” (Pikul 1). In other words, while some may view the concept of binge-watching as a nice escape, it ultimately does its damage on one’s circulation and metabolism, as well as their mental health, as certain programs can be quite taxing on the brain. Also, the more one continues to lounge around and binge-watch shows, the worse these symptoms can become, perhaps to the extremes of weight gain and obesity, or the pattern can create for work- or school-related struggles as the complication of the storylines can further make one tired and have trouble doing everyday tasks.