On August 29, 2025, researchers at the University of Georgia committed the academic equivalent of saying the quiet part out loud: binge-watching might actually be good for you. Their peer-reviewed study, published in Acta Psychologica, didn’t just poke at the pop culture habit everyone denies and everyone does—it blessed it, like a priest sprinkling holy water on a mountain of Funyuns.
The scholars called it “retrospective imaginative involvement,” which is academia’s way of describing what the rest of us know as “thinking about your favorite show in the shower.” According to the study, when we consume stories in long stretches—marathon-style—we build mental worlds rich enough to linger. We revisit them in daydreams. We carry their characters into errands and commutes. They become not just entertainment, but emotional scaffolding.
And in an era when therapy is expensive, healthcare is inaccessible, and capitalism has left us with the free time of a medieval serf, this news hit like the warm glow of a Netflix “Are you still watching?” screen. Yes, we are still watching. And yes, apparently it’s healing.
The Binge as Balm
The study found that binge-watching (and binge-reading, though participants admitted TV was more memorable than books, which must sting for publishers) can meet deep psychological needs: connection, safety, autonomy. In stressful times, these binges function like comfort blankets made of pixels.
We don’t just consume stories. We inhabit them. A six-hour Stranger Things session isn’t sloth—it’s residency. A weekend swallowed by Succession reruns isn’t indulgence—it’s immersive therapy in capitalist Shakespeareanism. The researchers confirmed what we always suspected: sometimes the marathon isn’t escape. Sometimes it’s survival.
Autoplay as God
Of course, the researchers were careful to balance their revelation with warnings: don’t replace sleep, sunlight, or friends with another autoplay. But let’s be honest—autoplay is already the closest thing most of us have to religion.
Autoplay never abandons you. Autoplay doesn’t ask how your job search is going. Autoplay doesn’t need to be scheduled. At the end of every episode, autoplay whispers the only unconditional promise modern life can deliver: next episode starting in 8 seconds.
Church bells don’t ring that consistently. Therapy sessions don’t end with a cliffhanger. No wonder autoplay feels divine.
The Health Scolds Chime In
Predictably, health experts rushed to remind us that binging comes with risks: sleep disruption, sedentary behavior, a vague sense of guilt when you realize you’ve worn the same sweatpants for three days. They warn us to balance comfort media with reality, as though reality has earned the right to be balanced with anything.
The idea that we should swap story immersion for “friends” and “sunlight” feels quaint at best, insulting at worst. Have you been outside lately? The rent is unaffordable, billionaires are cosplaying as space emperors, and politics is a rerun nobody asked for. Meanwhile, in your binge-world, dragons are real, the jokes land, and betrayal feels cathartic because it’s not your problem. Tell me again why I should prioritize sunlight?
Mental Worlds > Actual World
What the researchers call “mental worlds,” we might as well call better worlds. These are the universes where characters actually resolve conflicts, where relationships develop arcs instead of ghosting, where justice is occasionally served.
Participants admitted TV shows were more memorable than books. Critics will cry sacrilege, but the point isn’t literacy—it’s impact. Stories that binge best are stories that stay. They wedge themselves into the mental furniture. A season of television can embed more deeply than a novel because the binge is longer, louder, and accompanied by junk food.
The memorable world isn’t necessarily higher art. It’s just the one that clings. And clinging is survival.
The Democracy of the Binge
This is why the binge is democratic. Everyone can binge. You don’t need tickets. You don’t need credentials. You just need Wi-Fi and the willingness to dissolve time.
Prestige once belonged to the museum, the symphony, the library. Now it belongs to the binge. Retrospective imaginative involvement is just a fancy way of saying we are all secretly scholars of our own shows. Your roommate isn’t just lazy; she’s conducting long-form memory research via Grey’s Anatomy reruns. Your uncle isn’t just glued to Yellowstone; he’s building a mental ranch empire where his knees don’t ache.
The binge, in other words, has leveled the playing field. Everyone gets a world.
Critics Still Pretend They Don’t Do It
What makes this study satisfying is the hypocrisy it unmasks. Cultural critics have long treated binge-watching as vulgar. They insist “real” consumption should be paced, reflective, sipped slowly like fine wine. Never mind that those same critics spent entire weekends binging The Wire before filing their disdainful essays.
The study doesn’t just validate the binge. It indicts the scolds. It suggests that the immersive marathon may actually be more restorative than nibbling at one episode per week like it’s a communion wafer. Scholars have finally confirmed what the rest of us already knew: binging is not cheap. It’s immersive.
Comfort Media as Civil Disobedience
The beauty of the binge is that it doubles as low-key rebellion. In a system that treats every hour as monetizable, choosing to lose yourself in twelve episodes is a refusal. You aren’t producing. You aren’t networking. You aren’t hustling. You’re hoarding hours for yourself in a private, imaginary world.
Of course corporations try to monetize this too. Netflix literally engineered the binge into its platform. But at the core, bingeing is still a deeply personal act: taking time back from a world that wants every second to serve productivity. Comfort media becomes not laziness but resistance.
The Risk of Replacing Reality
Still, the study is careful to warn against excess. The binge is a balm, not a cure. Lose yourself too often, and you may discover your mental world is richer than your real one. Friends drift. Days vanish. Your own story arc withers.
That’s the paradox: the more restorative the binge, the more dangerous it becomes. The comfort of connection, safety, autonomy can seduce you into trading your own agency for fictional agency. Daydreams substitute for action. Story arcs substitute for progress. You binge to feel alive, until you notice your life is the one thing you haven’t binged.
The Haunting Close
So yes, the University of Georgia gave binge-watchers a gift: validation. They wrapped our guilty pleasure in Latin and footnotes, declared it not a vice but a coping mechanism. They proved what we already knew in our bones: sometimes marathons are medicinal. Sometimes the binge is the balm.
But here’s the haunting truth: the binge only works because reality doesn’t. We retreat into stories because the world outside refuses to provide connection, safety, or autonomy. We cling to mental worlds because our own feels precarious.
So the next time autoplay asks, “Are you still watching?” the answer isn’t just yes. It’s a confession. Yes, I am still watching, because the story keeps me alive in ways the world refuses to.