Has Netflix Destroyed Our Relationships?

Social relationships are a complex topic that has only become deeper with the advent of streaming services such as Netflix. According to Tech Jury, Netflix has over 1,300 recommendation clusters that help guide its users to the content they’d like to watch, with 80% of viewers relying solely on personalized recommendations.

While it’s positive that we are now able to enjoy our favorite shows and movies from the comfort of our homes and at the push of a button, this also raises some concerns. While Netflix was the progenitor of today’s “streaming wars”, we now have many services such as Disney+, Amazon Prime, and Hulu available at different price points and with different assortments of content.

It’s never been easier to watch any TV show or movie that you’ve always wanted to watch and yet, we face choice paralysis when it comes to picking what to spend our time on. Not only that, but our social lives and relationships can suffer under the increasingly oppressive “FOMO”, or the “Fear Of Missing Out”, that we’d rather watch the latest season of our favorite show instead of spending time with our loved ones or friends. How exactly has Netflix destroyed our perception of relationships and how can we regain the Social Wellness we had before streaming services became the norm?

The Honeymoon Phase

Our collective relationship with Netflix started back in 1997 when the company was launched with a deceptively simple idea in mind – what if we could rent DVDs and watch movies at home? While Netflix wasn’t the first company to offer this service, it was the first to feature DVD rental home delivery. You could call Netflix, choose a few movies you want to watch, and the company would send you those DVDs to your home address shortly after.

This was the birth of Netflix as we know it today, an expansion that would start with its Watch Now streaming service in 2007. Given how popular Netflix has proven itself to be early on, Hollywood has naturally found a stake in the streaming service and started investing in online-first content.

For the first time, TV shows and movies would be produced for online viewing exclusively, with limited or no theatrical or televised runs to speak of. While it wasn’t Netflix’s goal to change our understanding of social relationships, popular sayings such as “Netflix and chill” took the world by storm following the streaming giant’s official launch.

This was also the birth of content-locking and region-locking, which have made many of Netflix’s productions unavailable worldwide, sans piracy. Everything was poised to go smoothly until other giants on the market didn’t decide that they want a streaming service of their own. Today, multimillion productions are run by Warner Brothers, Disney, Sony, and other corporations with streaming services such as HBO Max, AMC+, and Paramount+ being only a few select services available today.

With so many platforms to choose from, viewers have become increasingly more confused about which ones to commit to or which ones feature the shows and movies they feel nostalgic for. Likewise, for us to stay in touch with the latest shows and movies, our social relationships would have to suffer because of our hobbies, making us more anti-social and withdrawn than ever before. The global pandemic only accentuated this, with many people finding solace in escapism rather than facing the daily news about the situation.

The Inherent Choice Paralysis

How much choice is too much choice? Given that Netflix allows its users to watch, or as companies like to say “consume”, content 24/7, it goes without saying that there are thousands of hours of content available. Moreover, Netflix and its contemporaries are investing millions into new productions which will be published on their services in the next several years.

The latest example of exuberant spending on digital content comes from HBO Max and their upcoming show “House of the Dragon”, reportedly costing upwards of $20 million per episode. But how much content is too much content? With dozens of TV shows and movies waiting on our proverbial “to watch” lists, our relationships with streaming services have also changed.

Many people choose to subscribe to a single service at a time and cancel their subscriptions before re-subscribing to another one with interesting content. Others however have chosen to go the illegal route and pirate the content they want to watch under the pretext of high subscription costs.

Netflix, and services similar to it, have created a choice paralysis among their viewers. What do you do if you have a choice of 10+ different shows to watch and only two hours of spare time? Most often, you don’t watch anything and opt for a different, more manageable activity.

At the Whims of AI Algorithms

As our social relationships are being destroyed by streaming services, the said services are doing their best to keep us engaged with their content. Netflix is only one of the platforms that have recently invested in more complex personalization algorithms based on AI and machine learning.

Their role is to A) recommend new content to watch and B) to be used in decision-making as to which content to produce moving forward. As an example, Netflix uses the following factors to determine what it will recommend you should watch next:

• Your previous watch history
• The time of day and date you watched it
• Whether you paused, rewound, or fast-forwarded the content
• Whether you finished watching the content
• How often and when you pause the content

With so many streaming services lining up to affect our relationships even further, Netflix is doing its best to determine which new original content to produce by closely monitoring what “works”. However, there is an inherent fallacy in determining which content to produce next based on collective interaction data, which is why Netflix is currently facing problems on a business level.

On Maintaining Healthy Relationships

Netflix was only the harbinger of a much greater issue we now face with our social relationships. Different platforms already exist based on Netflix’s model in different industries, including Spotify in the music industry and Microsoft’s Gamepass in the gaming industry. Subscription-based services are convenient but they all feature the same choice paralysis which plagued Netflix since its inception.

According to a University of Texas study, many people turn to streaming services such as Netflix as their coping mechanism for depression and loneliness. This offers them a way out of the negative feelings they’re experiencing, helping them manage their emotional wellness a little more easily. But, the same study indicated that people have a difficult time stopping the binge, resulting in work and relationship neglect.

Research published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships indicated that couples bonded over binge-watching their favorite shows. However, this has led many of them to disassociate from their friends or to spend less time with their children because their entertainment was now relegated to streaming services. With engaging content being spoon-fed to them through a digital screen, focusing on relationships and interaction outside of that bubble became increasingly more difficult.

The only choice we have left is whether we’ll devote our time to real social relationships or spend countless hours in front of our screens, consuming content for the service’s AI algorithm to use and learning more about how it can keep us engaged even longer.

What have we learned about Netflix and social relationships so far?

• Netflix was revolutionary in its DVD rental and delivery services in the early 2000s
• Numerous competitors have risen over the years to stake their claim in the streaming market
• Users face FOMO and choice paralysis every time they log into their streaming service account
• Social relationships can suffer greatly because of overindulgence in streaming content
• Introverted individuals and couples connect over streaming content, but it disassociates them from outside social interactions, affecting their overall emotional wellness
• Striving for a healthy balance of entertainment and socialization is the key to Social Wellness

The answer however isn’t to eliminate Netflix and any form of entertainment from everyday life. It’s about balancing both because we do need something “fun” to do after a long day at work or during a rainy weekend. If we can do that, we’ll be a step closer to achieving optimal Social Wellness and we’ll never feel like we’re neglecting our friends or loved ones because of a hit show we need to binge-watch as soon as possible.