Depression and anxiety among Tunisian medical students “binge viewers”

Abstract

IntroductionSince the advent of online streaming television, a new behavioural phenomenon have emerged among millennial, named “binge watching” that is viewing more than two episodes of a TV show in the same sitting. Whether or not this behaviour reflects emotional difficulties has been poorly studied.AimsDescribe the phenomenon and search a possible link with depression and anxiety.MethodsFifty medical students were recruited. A questionnaire exploring the circumstances, the purpose and the outcome of the binge viewing was fulfilled. The Beck depressive inventory and the state-trait anxiety inventory were passed for the assessment of depression and anxiety.ResultsAmong the 50 students questioned, 68% met the criteria of binge viewers and 64.7% of them adopted this behaviour at least once a week with an overall average of screen exposure of 3.8 hours in one sitting. Before the binge watching, 35.3% reported excitement and 29.4% boredom and have used it mostly to pass time (47.1%) and for fun (44.1%). Participants have felt more relaxed and happier after the viewing. Mild depression was found in 10 cases and moderate depression in 5 cases. Anxiety scores averaged 35.38 for state anxiety and 40.32 for trait anxiety. An inverse relationship was found between depression and anxiety scores and the frequency of the binge watching and its exposure duration. The correlation was hover non significant.ConclusionsCould it be that the binge watching is a means of fighting against anxiety and depression rather than an evidence of emotional difficulties? Further studies are needed.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

Understanding the Phenomenon of Binge-Watching—A Systematic Review

“…Five were conducted on a group larger than one thousand persons [19,20,30,37,47]. In eighteen studies, the sample size ranged between one hundred and one thousand participants [4,16,18,24,25,28,29,31,32,[34][35][36]38,40,[42][43][44][45][46], while five of them were conducted on a sample composed of less than one hundred individuals [22,33,39,41,48]. All the results addressed further in this paper, in the results section, are statistically significant unless otherwise stated.…”

“…All studies covered by the systematic review had clear aims. The methods used in the research were thoroughly described and were characterised by satisfactory psychometric properties such as reliability and validity [4,16,[18][19][20]22,24,25,[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38]40,43,45,46,48]. Four studies included descriptions of the methods used and the survey design but did not provide the reliability coefficient-Cronbach's α [28,39,41,44].…”

“…Four studies included descriptions of the methods used and the survey design but did not provide the reliability coefficient-Cronbach's α [28,39,41,44]. Most of the studies used non-probability and purposive sampling [4,16,[18][19][20]22,24,25,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]43,[45][46][47]. Random sampling was only applied in two studies [42,44].…”

“…Furthermore, the average age of the participants ranged between 18.54 and 47. However, most of the persons who participated in the majority of the studies were aged between 18.54 and 29 [16,[18][19][20]24,25,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] Only in six studies, the average age of those surveyed was higher, namely between 30 and 47 years [4,22,[42][43][44][45]. Some articles addressed marital status in their sociodemographic variables, and the results show that most of those surveyed were unmarried and had no children [22,28,31,34,35,42,46].…”

Compensatory Usage of the Internet: The Case of Mukbang Watching on YouTube

“…14 Empirical studies have consistently highlighted associations between depression and loneliness and the problematic (e.g., excessive) involvement in various types of online activities such as social networking (e.g., Facebook use), pornography use, and bingewatching television series. [15][16][17][18][19][20] Eating disorders have become more common in recent decades especially in combination with obesity. 21 The total prevalence of lifetime eating disorders among U.S. adults has been reported as almost 2% and emerging adults appear to be more at risk of disordered eating compared to older age groups.…”