Since the COVID-19 pandemic has started, we’ve all been stuck at home quarantining, with more free time than ever before. This has resulted in us trying to make the most out of this and doing things out of boredom. Whether it has been learning a new TikTok dance, playing a puzzle, or learning how to bake, there have been lots of ways we have been keeping ourselves busy. One thing that has overwhelmingly increased though, has been our Netflix binge-watching habits.
In fact, resonate.com’s reports have shown that 62% of consumers are now increasing their consumption of streaming TV. And of course, Netflix takes that pie; they were the most streamed among all of the streaming services, with 51% of consumers indicating that they are now watching the channel more than they were prior to the pandemic.
The company has overall gained 15.8 million global subscribers since the beginning of lockdown. It now has a total of 183 million customers. Netflix generated a net income of $709 million or $1.57 earnings per share in its first quarter, more than double from a year earlier. Revenue during the same period rose from 28% to $5.77 billion.
And students have been a huge part of that.
Victoria Koretsky, a junior at Richard Montgomery, never really watched any movies before the quarantine. It was hard for her to find 2 hours to just sit down and watch. Once lockdown started, however, her movie intake went up. She has never been good at watching movies because her attention span isn’t long enough to fully enjoy them, but she was still watching more.
“I now had all this free time that I didn’t know what to do with, and TV seemed like a good way to fill some time. So in mid-March and early April, I was definitely watching a lot more than I ever have before, probably 3 or 4+ hours a day,” Koretsky said.
Janaylin Carela, a junior at Albert Einstein, has also increased her binge-watching. “Since the lockdown, I have watched a lot of TV. At one point I had bought subscriptions to Netflix, Hulu, Disney plus, and Amazon Prime. My streaming intake increased rapidly. I didn’t have much to do and at night I would stay up until 5 am to watch tv,” Carela said.
Carela watched a lot of Telenovelas and the show Criminal Minds. But throughout quarantine, she “ found [herself] switching genres once [she] got bored.”
And Netflix has noticed these patterns, as they have been keeping us busy with documentaries, new seasons of our favorite shows, and original movies. And since this month Netflix opened up production back up again, so the pattern for these students isn’t going to stop any time soon.
Article by Nour Faragallah of Walter Johnson High School
Photo by Ashley Neyra of Watkins Mill High School