How do you watch TV? All in one gulp or paced out slowly in weekly increments? This week a Radio Times survey suggested that the latter method is falling out of fashion, with 80% of respondents suggesting that they’d lost sleep binge-watching a programme, and more than half claiming to have watched more than eight hours of a show in one sitting.

Yet how satisfying is binge-watching really? Yes, there’s something comforting about knowing that the next episode is only ever one short countdown away, but it’s also the case that being able to watch shows when we want and as frequently as we want (at least until that terrible moment when the episodes dry up) is increasingly affecting the way we consume TV – and not necessarily for the better.

Take, for example, the conversation around spoilers. It’s no coincidence that this has only intensified in the era of binge TV, when people no longer have any clear idea of when they can start discussing a major twist. Worse, binge-watching encourages us to put our individual viewing experience centre stage, positioning it as equal to, if not more important than, the programme being watched. This means that we’re enraged when someone quicker off the mark discusses a show before we’re ready, leading to bitter arguments that would have been avoided if everyone was watching at the same time.

And it’s not just spoiler etiquette that’s affected. The worst thing about binge-watching isn’t the online fury or the fear of missing out or even the sneaky lying to your family about how many episodes you’ve really watched. It’s that it denies viewers the pleasure that a truly communal TV experience brings.

That sense of television as a communal rather than an individual experience is the reason why the year’s most talked about shows – Game of Thrones, Line of Duty and Fleabag – have been those that aired weekly, forcing audiences to wait. Being made to wait seven days for each new episode of Game of Thrones is the reason why even the smallest plot points were analysed and debated and why viewers became so creative with memes and gifs.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Watching Fleabag back to back would have entirely lessened the cultural impact of the Hot Priest.’ Photograph: Luke Varley/BBC/Two Brothers/Luke Varley

Similarly, if Line of Duty had been binge-watched, no one would have had time to concoct elaborate theories about OCGs and UCOs, while watching Fleabag back-to-back would have entirely lessened the cultural impact of the Hot Priest, a man whose appeal (or lack thereof) was driven by the fact that fans were feverishly discussing it every week.

Of course a version of those conversations might still have happened if those shows had been available to watch all at once but they wouldn’t have dominated popular discourse in quite the same way.

Not convinced? Then consider the example of The Last Kingdom. When it aired weekly on BBC Two, the travails of Uhtred, son of Uhtred were readily available to chew over in bite-sized chunks. The excellent third series has been on Netflix since last November but any discussion was over almost before it had truly begun. Similarly, Deutschland 83 was one of Channel 4’s biggest hits when it aired weekly. Deutschland 86, the sequel, barely caused a ripple after being released in its entirety on Walter Presents via All 4 earlier this year.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Deutschland 86 ‘barely caused a ripple’ when presented in its entirety on All 4. Photograph: Anika Molnár/Channel 4

The very nature of binge-watching means that the conversation becomes fragmented and, while it’s wonderful to find your tribe, those people who are obsessing over Call My Agent or the select (but clearly correct) few who have tracked down the second series of Harlots, it’s hard to top the rush of knowing we’re all watching the same thing at (roughly) the same point in time.

At this point, committed bingers are no doubt shaking their heads in despair at my old-fashioned and out-of-touch ways. I understand. Truly, I do. It’s nice to have the power and the freedom to watch something at your own speed, to finish something when and as you want. But it’s nice too to have the space to think about what you’ve watched, to mull over what just happened while waiting for the next episode to air and to feel part of a wider moment (even if your biggest contribution is to say “why on earth is everyone watching this crap?”).

At its best, television has always been a two-way conversation between creators and viewers, stuffed full of tasty morsels to discuss. The trouble with binge-watching is that it turns that over-stuffed banquet into a superficially filling but ultimately unsatisfying meal for one.

• Sarah Hughes writes on TV and the arts