“Netflix and relaxation” — the viral phrase that has become a calling card for consensual copulations had a fairly simple origin. In January 2009, a user who went by the name NoFaceNina (@nofacenina) tweeted, “I’m about to tune into Netflix and relax for the rest of the night.” This is widely accepted as the very first recorded example of the phrase and, interestingly, the tweet came just two years after Netflix started streaming movies online.
Now let’s focus on the last part of the tweet – “chill out for the rest of the night”. While that sounds great, especially after a hard day’s work, the concern that arises is: if you’re winding down for the night, when do you sleep?
According to Netflix co-founder and executive chairman Reed Hastings, sleep is the streaming giant’s greatest enemy. During a 2017 Netflix earnings call, Hastings said rivals like Prime Video or HBO aren’t really major concerns.
“They do great programming, and they will continue to do so, but I’m not sure it will affect us much. Because the market is so vast. You know, think about it, when you watch a Netflix show and get addicted to it, you stay up late at night. You really – we compete with sleep, at the margin. And so, it’s a very big pool of time,” he said.
According to a 2020 study published by SleepStandards, nearly 75% of Netflix users don’t have enough time to cover even seven hours of sleep a day. The study further revealed that 46% of respondents admitted to having trouble sleeping after consuming Netflix for hours.
So it seems Netflix isn’t so cool when it comes to sleep.
And it’s not just Netflix to blame. A 2022 study from Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia found that YouTube may be more detrimental to teenage users’ sleep than traditional TV or even Netflix. The study indicated that 30 minutes spent on the app results in an overall delay of 13 minutes before going to sleep. What’s more, every 15 minutes spent watching reduces the chance of getting enough sleep by 24%, according to the study.
A 2019 study by the Bengaluru-based National Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience (NIMHANS) found that overt use of smartphones during bedtime not only affects sleep quality but also intensifies instances of fatigue and insomnia.
Why do we need to sleep?
If you still haven’t dozed off reading this, you must be wondering why this author is buzzing about how sleep is affected by streamers and smartphone use.
Well, let me explain. July 22 is celebrated as World Brain Day. Created by the World Federation of Neurology (WFN) in 2014, World Brain Day aims to raise awareness about a different topic of neurological health each year. In 2023, the theme is brain health and disability. WFN believes that brain disorders can be “prevented, treated and rehabilitated” and that whole brain awareness could “reduce the disability associated with brain disorders”.
Now, we all already know that, among several other things, routine sleep is one of the biggest requirements for maintaining a healthy brain. After all, we spend almost a quarter or even a third of our human lives sleeping. So there must be a good reason for that, right?
According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, a good amount of sleep is necessary for what’s called “brain plasticity,” which is the brain’s ability to adapt to input. “If we sleep too little, we become unable to process what we have learned during the day and have a harder time remembering it in the future,” reads the university’s official blog.
In addition, our brain is best able to eliminate waste from its cells when we sleep. If we stay awake, this process becomes significantly less efficient.
So how to relax (read: sleep) Without Netflix?
The best solution – and probably the only logic – is to reduce screen time when you’re in bed.
Smartphones, or any digital screen for that matter, emit light in the blue wavelength, which keeps the brain alert and active, much like light from the morning sky does. According to a study conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School, reading an e-book led to an average of 10 minutes of prolonged sleep compared to reading a traditional paper book.
Additionally, the onset of melatonin, a hormone that regulates sleep, was found to be delayed by about 1.5 hours when reading an e-book. Additionally, reading e-books was associated with a decrease in melatonin release by an average of 55%. This reduced the amount of precious REM sleep by about 12 minutes and also affected morning alertness.
So maybe save a few episodes for the next day. Complete these extra game levels tomorrow. Netflix and chill sound good, but not at the expense of neurological well-being.
Digital disconnect is a ABP live-Exclusive column, where we explore the many admirable advances that the world of technology sees every day, and how they lead to a certain disconnect between users. Is the modern world easier to live with thanks to technology? Certainly. Does that mean we don’t want things to go back to the good old days? Well, watch our next column to find out.
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