Hi Emma, I’m curious about your sources because I haven’t seen good evidence of the phenomenon you note. Often “binge” watching is used to describe anything other than watching one episode weekly. Mostly it describes people working their way through episodes of show in the same way they’d read a book, an episode or two when they have time, not hours on end. Our representative survey of Australian adults showed it takes most a month to get through a 10 episode show. That survey also found that half of movie viewing and just under half of series viewing is done with other people.
I think people use streaming different ways at different times; it has made it easier for me to watch a show with each of my very busy teenagers, for example, or helps us when we are all available for a family movie night. At other times, I can watch shows that no one else in my house wants to watch, and the same for the others. I do find the situation now superior to when I grew up. The consequence of the old norms was that far fewer stories were told (at least in the US) – they were almost always about white people, had male leads, and people who had plenty of money. Now I find many more stories about people with all kinds of lives that face all kinds of challenges, and I appreciate seeing those stories.
With almost every new technology, a ‘moral panic’ gets created based on the bad uses assumed, but research has consistently shown humans are more complicated and the moral panic gets disproven.