Binge Watching and Mental Health Among Late Adolescence and Early Adulthood

Abstract

The proliferation of digital streaming platforms has revolutionized the way individuals consume audiovisual content, ushering in a new era of binge-watching culture. This study investigates the potential impact of binge-watching on the mental health of late adolescents and early adults. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, data was collected from a diverse sample of 100 participants aged 16-30 through questionnaire method. In terms of binge-watching performance, the mean score for adolescent subjects stands at 98.72, slightly lower than the mean score for adult subjects, which is 101.3. The standard deviation for both groups is comparable, with adolescent subjects at 15.543 and adult subjects at 15.622, resulting in a t-score of 0.852. Furthermore, when examining mental health scores, the mean for adolescent subjects is 15.02, whereas for adult subjects it is slightly higher at 16.58. The corresponding standard deviations are 6.10951 and 6.44946 for adolescents and adults, respectively, leading to a t-score of 0.514. This indicates that adults exhibit marginally higher mental health symptom scores compared to adolescents. Moreover, the correlation analysis between binge-watching (BW) and mental health (MH) yields a coefficient of 0.408, accompanied by an impressively low p-value of less than 0.001. Significantly, this signifies a moderately positive correlation between binge-watching and mental health. These findings suggest binge-watching may be a risk factor for mental health issues in this demographic, potentially influencing both ways—individuals with existing mental health concerns may be more inclined to binge-watch, or binge-watching may lead to mental health problems.