Abstract
Social distancing and lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic substantially impacted individuals' daily habits and well-being. Within such a context, digital technology may provide a welcome source of alternative forms of connection and entertainment. Indeed, streaming services showed a remarkable increase in membership subscriptions throughout the period considered. However, excessive involvement in watching TV series has recently become a subject of scholarly concern as it may represent an emerging form of addictive behavior with the features of what has been labeled as “binge-watching” (i.e., watching multiple episodes of TV series in a single session). The current study aimed to assess TV series watching behaviors and related motivations, as well as their relationships with depression, stress and anxiety, in a sample of Italian adults during the COVID-19 lockdown. Specifically, we aimed to explore which patterns of motivations and emotional states influenced either a high but healthy engagement in watching TV series, or promoted problematic and uncontrolled watching behavior under such circumstances. A total of 715 adults (M = 31.70, SD = 10.81; 71.5% female) from all over Italy were recruited (from 1st to 30th April 2020) through advertisements via social media platforms of Italian university communities and other online groups. Two multiple hierarchical regression analyses were performed with non-problematic and problematic TV series watching set as dependent variables. Results showed that people spent more time watching TV series during the pandemic lockdown, especially women who also reported higher levels of anxiety and stress than men. Moreover, both non-problematic (R2 = 0.56; p < 0.001) and problematic (R2 = 0.33; p < 0.001) TV series watching behaviors were equally induced by anxiety symptoms and escapism motivation, thereby suggesting that watching TV series during the COVID-19 lockdown probably served as a recovery strategy to face such a stressful situation. Finally, our findings also suggest that enrichment motives may protect from uncontrolled and potentially addictive watching behaviors. These findings, therefore, hold important implications, particularly for avoiding the over-pathologization of excessive involvement in online activities emerging as a result of specific distressing situations.
Highlights
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has caused worldwide derangement
More streaming service trends revealed a definite impact of COVID-19 quarantining with a sharp increase in membership subscriptions—for example, a 104% increase in Netflix subscribers and 633% in Disney Plus subscribers were observed between January and April 2020 at the worldwide level [22, 23]
Females reported a higher extent of engagement in watching TV series, and higher levels of anxiety and stress symptoms
Summary
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has caused worldwide derangement. Governments imposed lockdown and measures of social distancing, ruling restrictions that highly affected individuals’ daily routine and impacted on people’s behaviors and psychological well-being [1,2,3,4,5]. A wide body of international literature has investigated how the outbreak emergency has affected mental health [2, 6,7,8,9,10], forcing individuals to cope with uncertainty, fears, isolation and feelings of stress, anxiety and depression [3, 11, 12]. A recent meta-analytic study provided evidence of increased rates of depression (24%), anxiety (26%), post-traumatic stress symptoms (15%), and poor sleep quality (34%) in the general population following the Covid-19 outbreak [13]. Was the first European country to face the pandemic emergency, and recent studies involving Italian samples suggested that lonely as well as depressive individuals have been more likely to perceive the COVID-19 outbreak and related containment measures as distressful [14,15,16,17]. As regards Italy since March 2020, Netflix and the newcomer Disney Plus have recorded an increase of accesses of 332 and 290%, respectively [24]
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