The way we, as college students, consume television is seemingly contradictory. Never before has there been such an undeniable sense of urgency to keep up with TV shows. Spoilers will be on Twitter and Facebook within minutes—if not seconds—of an episode airing, followed closely by headlines on our favorite websites.
On the other side of the coin is binge-watching, facilitated by Netflix, Hulu and a variety of other sites. But what are “kids these days” really doing? Are we tweet-obsessed fans with a compulsive need to comment and have our voices heard to prove we watched and instantly evaluated an episode? Or are we bedridden zombies who forsake all outside stimulation to watch an entire season (or more) of a TV show into the wee hours of the morning, only to talk of nothing else for the following week? Curious about the answer, I decided to conduct a completely unscientific study based on a totally nonrandom sample of 24 students in my selective living group.
Before I go too deeply into my findings, I think it’s important to know a few things about me, the researcher. I won’t bore you—or shame myself—with a list of all the shows I watch, but they span a massive range, from gruesome dramas to heartwarming comedies to classless reality shows (whoops! There I go, shaming myself). I’m definitely abnormal when it comes to television, especially for a student. Back home, we still get mail-order Netflix and only subscribed online for a month to watch "Arrested Development." My parents would be surprised not to see me sitting on the couch, staring at the television. At school, my friends would be surprised not to find me sitting in my bed watching TV on my laptop.
In that way at least, I’m a pretty average college student. One aspect of my friends’ television habits is pretty definitive. We don’t watch TV on TV. Unless we’re talking about sports, it would be rare to see people gathered around the common room television. Watching shows “live” has taken on an entirely different meaning than it had just five years ago. I’m not talking about live TV, like the American Idol results show. I’m talking about the novel idea of watching a TV show when it’s actually airing. Weird, right? Apparently, it’s just not a thing anymore. One of my anonymous respondents put it best: “Computers are the actual televisions.”
But the thing is, computers can do so much more than televisions. We can pick up our laptops and bring them anywhere. We take them to dinner, we take them to class, we take them to our tents in K-Ville and bemoan our loss of battery. It’s sometimes as if we’re worried our hands will get lonely if they aren’t constantly touching a keyboard. So it’s no wonder that when we watch TV on our computers, we multitask in turn.
My survey was mainly about Netflix. People told me how ingenious the instant play of the next episode in a series is and how much they love the original programming like “House of Cards” and “Orange is the New Black.” But surprisingly, as much as people talk about Netflix, only about a third of the people in my sample actually subscribe. Some vow to purchase it once they become “real people” while others had parents who revoked their access for the school year in order to promote a more studious lifestyle.
However, Netflix users are certainly loyal. While most people seem to use some combination of Hulu, network television sites and other streaming sources, Netflix users almost always refuse to use anything else. One friend told me that there are some shows he would watch, but they aren’t on Netflix. “Too much effort,” he reported. That’s a fidelity I don’t think I’ll ever understand. Sometimes I use Amazon Prime’s instant video (along with no one else), but I can’t see myself committing fully to it and settling down. I can engage in a long-term relationship with a television program. I’ll suffer through an especially rough season because I remember the good times we had. Some shows provide me with a new reason to love them every episode. But a streaming service? Maybe someday, once I find the right one.
It seems that Netflixers may be more committed to the medium than to the actual programs themselves. Unfathomable to me was that some people in my study “save up” episodes just to binge watch them later. They’ll watch a few episodes of a show, then wait a few weeks for more to air before doing a mini-binge of those. I had always thought binge-watching was to catch up with everyone else, but the idea that you should leave yourself deliberately behind seems incongruous. What is it about the Netflix mentality that makes it so alluring? I suppose once you’ve experienced the ease of your episodes queued up without commercials, it’s hard to turn back. Contrary to what Buzzfeed and Slate tell us, binging and mini-binging have taken precedence over keeping up with the Joneses, or the Kardashians, in real time. We like to be in charge of our own schedules. College students are busy, and we want to take solace in a few uninterrupted hours of television. And if that’s really the case, I think Netflix is missing out on a huge marketing opportunity.
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