Is Netflix turning us into The WAKING Dead?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Okay – on-screen zombies may not pop out of TVs to infect us. But your online binge series may be that fateful bite! Full season releases tempt us to keep clicking that “next episode” button. But how is this affecting our sleep?
Enter Liese Exelmans and Jan Van den Bulck from the University of Leuven in Belgium. They asked over four hundred people about their binge-watching and sleeping patterns. Their survey scored sleep quality, fatigue and even how alert people are before bedtime.
Results? Turns out, watching two or more episodes in a row is all it takes to be a binger! And that makes you ninety-eight percent more likely to have trouble sleeping!
Binging doesn’t just cut into our sleep hours. The exhilaration also affects the QUALITY of our zzz’s. The more worked up we get before sleeping, the more we toss and turn! Plaguing us with insomnia, fatigue – and that vacant, living dead stare!
Let’s fight off the sleepwalking zombie apocalypse, one less episode at a time!