Last year, Netflix is estimated to have put out close to 1,500 hours of new, original content. That's 62.5 days' worth. It's almost 9 whole weeks of TV and movies.

The streaming giant's showing no signs of slowing down in 2019, either. Quite the opposite. In January alone, it debuted *38* new original series and films, 1-2 every single day.

Of those 1,500 hours, 966 – or roughly 66% – were made up of original series. Even taking movies out of the equation, it's utterly impossible to watch that much TV – or at least to watch it all and remain a properly functioning human being.

And yet, we still feel the urge to watch as much as possible, don't we? And not only that, we want to consume it as quickly as possible.

Netflix

FOMO's a big part of it. Netflix has a mostly young-ish audience – a YouGov poll of 2000 subscribers conducted in 2018 showed that just under 50% of its viewers are under the age of 35 – which means that every time a major new series or tentpole movie release hits the service, it absolutely lights up social media.



Even if you've not watched Sex Education, or Russian Doll, or Bird Box, or that Fyre Festival documentary, you'll have seen friends, colleagues and industry experts tweeting about them. And, of course, this self-perpetuating hype machine will tell you, time and again, that each subsequent release is the next absolute must-watch.

If you don't watch one show quick enough to move on to the next one, you're in danger of being left behind. Even if you started on release day, you had to watch 2-3 episodes of Sex Education per week in order to be finished in time for Russian Doll's launch three weeks later. (And both those shows are a relatively brisk watch at just eight episodes – don't get us started on the likes of the Marvel shows and their 13-episode seasons.)



Jon Hall/Netflix Netflix

Then there's the fear of being spoiled. With entire seasons of television being dropped on the service at a time and everyone consuming at a different pace, it's impossible to agree on what constitutes a spoiler, and when it stops being one.

You might not have watched all of The Punisher season two in a weekend, but someone out there has. So if they tweet about something that happens in episode 13 and you're only on episode 3... well, why didn't you binge-watch?

But both FOMO and fear of spoilers are both, to a certain degree, things we can control. Resist the peer pressure. Stay off of Twitter (or at least mute particular hashtags).

There's no external pressure being put on you by Netflix itself, right? It might be producing all these shows, but once they're out there, Netflix isn't actively *forcing* you to binge-watch. Or is it?

One Day at a Time, Netflix's reinvention of the classic CBS sitcom, returned for a third season on February 8, but just *two days* later, showrunner Mike Royce was urging fans to race through the 13 new episodes as quickly as possible.

Netflix

In a short statement on Twitter, Royce wrote: "Some One Day at a Time watchers have expressed the very lovely sentiment that you want to spread season 3 out so you don't finish too quickly AND I GET THAT BUT... Netflix relies on the first couple weeks of data to make their decision. So if you want season 4 of One Day at a Time, finish the season in the first couple weeks."

Netflix's turnover is fast, and so, it appears, is its decision-making process. If renewal decisions hinge on figures from the first two weeks of a show's release and you don't finish the entire season – or, heaven forbid, haven't even started watching – within that stretch, then your viewing of the show won't count for much when you do eventually get round to it.

If Royce is to be believed, then the message is clear: binge-watch your favourite show or it might get cancelled. (And with Netflix getting increasingly axe-happy, looking to replace more shows produced by outside studios with its own wholly-owned originals, that feels like a more serious threat than ever.)

Still, technically, no-one's *forcing* you to binge-watch. You can watch the latest episodes of a Netflix original series at whatever pace best suits you. Just bear in mind that, if you don't devote that first weekend of release to a binge-watch, that new season might also be the last.

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