To feel good or not feel good: Are TV series really beneficial to our well-being?

By Margaux Baralon | @MargauxBaralon

At a time when most people consume TV series as a form of comfort food and to be cheered up on a bad day, is it possible to prove that our favorite episodes have the power to make us feel good? We spoke to Christophe Debien, a psychiatrist from Lille University Hospital.

While some viewers will tell you that a Friends rewatch is just what the doctor ordered, others are partial to The Office. Personally, Desperate Housewives is how I unwind. Reassuring, immersive, comforting, TV series help fans feel better when they’re down. But does it actually work? Because the other side of the coin is that television has been accused of causing violent behavior (after the release of Squid Game on Netflix, Jean-Michel Blanquer, who was serving as Minister of National Education in France at the time, expressed some concerns over children reenacting games from the show on the playground). And according to several scientists who compare the practice to an addiction, binge-watching accentuates mindlessness and social isolation.

According to Dr Christophe Debien, a psychiatrist from Lille University Hospital who loves television so much he wrote a book about it (called “Our heroes are sick,” Nos héros sont malades, 2020, Humensciences editions), the first positive impact TV series have on our lives is that they invite us to identify with fictional characters. “Via this mechanism, we feel a range of emotions based on what the heroes are going through. We often use the expression ‘I’m really into it’ when talking about a favorite show. What it actually means is that we were able to access the inner world of the characters.”

Even negative emotions can be beneficial

And feeling the feels is good for us! In 2018, Dr Martin Seligman, director of the UPenn Positive Psychology Center, confirmed the results from a previous study on the subject. According to him, feeling positive emotions is a building block of our well-being. This is why when we watch a comedy, for instance, we enter a state of bliss. As we are reminded in a theoretical review from 2016, compiling the results from many independent scientific studies: “Laughter is a positive sensation, and seems to be a useful and healthy way to overcome stress […] Furthermore, endorphins secreted by laughter can help when people are uncomfortable or in a depressed mood.”

So, does it mean that only feel-good TV series can get the job done? Should we start to (re)watch Veep or Community instead of Squid Game and The Last of Us? Not necessarily. “What’s fantastic about TV series is that we can feel everything, including fear, from the safety of our own couch. We remain in control of the situation because we can turn off the TV whenever we wish,” says Dr Debien. Dramas are also beneficial, as they trigger feelings of empathy. According to the findings of a study published in 2015 in the academic journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, watching dramas such as Mad Men or The West Wing can improve our emotional intelligence, as opposed to watching nonfiction programs. Conclusion: although it doesn’t make for a joyful ride, trying to understand what the character of Don Draper is going
through during seven seasons of Mad Men will help us foster positive (and helpful) feelings… in real life.

Identifying with struggling characters… it can help

As part of his professional duties, Dr Christophe Debien also looked into the mechanism of identifying with TV characters when it comes to the difficult subject of mental disorders. It is beneficial too: “Stories are less potent than real-life testimonies, but they can still have a very positive impact on the receiver.” He adds: “Of course, it depends on what you are watching: if a TV series is depicting schizophrenia patients as murderers, it won’t feel good if you are affected by the condition. But for viewers who are struggling with suicidal ideation, for instance, watching characters go through something similar can help.”

For several years now, a number of fictions have sought to depict mental disorders without reducing them to a caricature. Mental (available on France TV Slash) follows a group of teenagers at an inpatient psychiatric unit. Atypical is a comedy about an autistic teen boy who is looking for love. According to Christophe Debien, this show provides: “A breath of fresh air when it comes to a serious disorder that is often depicted with tremendous inaccuracy.” Before that, of course, there was Tony Soprano seeking therapy. “We really needed to see this realistic representation of depression and to witness the type of conversations Tony had with his
psychiatrist,” confirms Dr Debien. As for Carrie Mathison from Homeland, she has proven that a person with bipolar disorder can still thrive in their career and love life.

The virtues of social interaction

According to the author of Nos héros sont malades, another quality we can attribute to TV series is their “social function,” meaning they have the power to make us get into passionate arguments with other people. Remember how, for years, the Game of Thrones fandom would fall into endless conversations every Monday after the latest episode aired. “What matters are the water-cooler moments. We strike up a conversation with someone we would have probably not talked to otherwise, and it’s all the more intense from having gone through the same emotions watching the show. It’s similar to what we experience when we go to a concert: it’s a moment of communion around a work of art. Television followed by social interaction makes us feel really good.” And, once again, it doesn’t have to be a light and fun piece of entertainment in order to create a connection, sometimes even across different generations of viewers who don’t share much otherwise. For example, take Thirteen Reasons Why, a show that tackles the topic of suicide openly. It’s a good thing for parents to be able to watch the series and establish a line of communication on the subject with their teenage children,” argues Christophe Debien.

So, do TV series only have a positive impact on our well-being? Google it and you are bound to be convinced of the contrary, after falling into a black hole of studies that link binge-watching to depression, anxiety and loneliness. Scientists from Poland to Taiwan, Italy, Portugal and Pakistan are carefully looking at the impact of watching episode after episode after episode on our psyche. As for the media, they love to relay the most alarming findings. If you look at it closely, there is indeed a link. For instance, let’s consider a 2017 study published in the journal Media Watch by a professor and researcher based in Dubai. She examines how binge-watching might correlate to depression. But she does not conclude that the former is the cause of the latter. “Therefore, depression might make the person attempt to escape from their condition to watch more TV content that releases the stress,” she writes.

Binge-watching is more a symptom than a cause

Dr Christophe Debien agrees. “It’s very clear to me that when someone spends all of their time in front of a TV series, forgetting to eat or sleep, we should be concerned. But is it really the activity of binge-watching that triggers that behavior? It’s usually the other way around: an activity at the exclusion of others is usually the symptom of something else. It is a way to compensate for whatever is not going well in our lives and to think about something else.” The role of TV series as an escape mechanism has been largely documented during Covid-19. For example, in the Italian study mentioned above, the author concludes that: “immersing oneself in
a fictional world allows for temporary distraction from real-life challenges, offering a form of emotional numbing that can provide momentary relief from overwhelming feelings.”

There is a reason why so many people enjoy rewatching a beloved show as a form of distraction from reality: repetition is surprisingly cozy. When we already know what’s going to happen story-wise, we can luxuriate in the familiarity of the emotions that we are going to feel, knowing they will be pleasant. To quote professor of cognitive psychology, Robert N. Kraft, in Psychology Today: “Knowing what will happen bestows order and safety.” Moreover, TV series from our formative years act as a form of “therapeutic nostalgia,” according to Kraft. “We rewatch old movies [and TV shows] because they allow us to relive a time we remember with fondness. [They] place us into another world, not just in the enacted story but outside, in the story of our own lives. We get involved [in the story] while remembering our lives associated with that movie [or TV series].” So next time you are tempted to rewatch Gilmore Girls or The X-Files, don’t resist! As long as you don’t forget to sleep, eat (even Pop-Tarts will do) and go out to socialize, it’s all good!