Is binge-watching series bad for your mental health?

Last week I spent three days doing that thing that South Africans like to do where we drive for hours to arrive at a big piece of land that we then spend further hours driving through in search of animals.

With sporadic internet access and nothing to do except appreciate the joys of nature, my immediate reaction was to get anxious about what television intrigues I was missing out on - the finale of Twin Peaks, the next episode of Manhunt: Unabomber and the continuing difficulties of Ray Donovan.

Upon my return to civilisation I immediately switched on my computer, caught up on my stories and gave the second season of Steven Soderbergh's criminally underrated early 20th-century medical drama The Knick the attention it deserved.

My complete devotion to the series world got me thinking about what binge watching might be doing to our brains.

Sure, before Netflix there were DVD box sets, but the phenomenon of being able to sink into the couch and watch a whole series all at once without having to get up to change discs is a relatively new one and it turns out that it's also inspired several research studies that have attempted to understand what our new "no more delayed gratification" viewing habits are doing to the grey matter.

WHAT TYPE OF BINGE WATCHER ARE YOU?

Last year Netflix conducted research to establish how much time viewers spend watching series and what kind of shows they prefer to binge on. It divided viewers into different types of binge watchers, from the "very fast" to the "fairly quick" and the "slightly more relaxed".

The "very fast binger" takes about four days to finish a season of a show and spends around two-and-a-half hours a day watching series. Their favourite genres are horror, thrillers and sci-fi, examples of which included Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, American Horror Story and Orphan Black.

These are the kinds of shows that research has shown sometimes result in what one Twitter user termed "PBWD" - post-binge-watching depression. You get so caught up in the drama that when it's all over you feel as though there's a hole in the real world that you can't fill.

The "fairly quick binger" takes about five days to finish a show and spends about two hours a day watching series. Tastes run to dramatic comedies, crime dramas and superhero shows like Fargo, Orange is the New Black and Marvel's Jessica Jones, and because these are slightly less demanding of our complete attention, the fallout from their conclusion is less dramatic.

Finally there's "the slightly more relaxed binger" who likes political dramas, comedies and historical stories and takes about six days at one hour and forty-five minutes a day to get their fix.

These are the fans of the roller-coaster, one punchline every 30 seconds comedies like The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt or the verbal machine-gun barbs of The West Wing and the twists and overblown turns of Homeland.

The researchers have posited that these kind of shows require more time to digest and so viewers tend to have to take some time to mull over what they've seen before moving on to the next installment.

CHICKEN OR EGG?

An article published in The Guardian last year reported that 35% of viewers interviewed admitted to binge watching and that the majority of those were "more likely to report higher stress, anxiety and depression".

The problem was that the study wasn't able to prove that these were the result of watching too much television.

Anxiety, stress and depression are the chicken to series-watching's egg - you might indulge in binge watching because you're anxious, stressed and depressed to begin with.

Until we figure out the scientific relation between bingeing and post-bingeing feelings of emptiness, it's probably best not to worry and push that comforting "next" button.