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These days, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t have a Netflix account, or at least some kind of streaming service to watch TV with.
But sitting down and binge-watching TV shows is something that you do consciously, knowing it’s not the best thing to do for your health.
And now, a study has linked just two hours of TV every day to higher levels of anxiety, depression, and stress, as well as sleep problems.
The study asked 406 people to track the amount of TV they watched and how they felt after they watched it.
7.9 percent of these people reported that they felt depressed after watching it, in comparison to 3.9 percent of people who didn’t watch as much.
One thing that isn’t clear, though, is whether or not binge watching leads to depression, or if it’s the other way around.
Monita Karmakar, a PhD student who worked on the study, said: “We do not know which came first. Depression, anxiety and stress led them to binge watch or if binge watching led to depression, anxiety, and stress.”
She said that it was more of a “chicken and egg” situation than anything, and that the study also didn’t take into account their eating habits and exercise.
“We did not look at eating babits or exercising habits but TV watching is a sedentary behavior and sedentary behaviors lead to mental health problems and medical symptoms shown to increase cardiovascular disease and risk of diabetes.”
Regardless of whether or not it causes mental illness, sitting and watching TV for long periods of time definitely isn’t healthy. It’s been linked to eight major causes of death. So if you’re a major TV watcher, at least try to work some squats or stretching into your routine. It may save you from depression and disease.
