To Anyone Who STILL WATCHES NETFLIX

It’s October 2023.

I’m absolutely loving life.

• I’m making progress towards my goals, in the gym, on my YT channel, at school.

• I’ve improved my mental health so much that I actually wake up every day excited.

I know it sounds cringe to say, but I felt like the main character in my own movie.

Then the half term holidays roll around.

My dad has taken the week off, so for once, we all sit down together as a family and watch a movie.

Great, no problems here.

Then the next day rolls around. Another movie.

And the next day. Another movie.

And another.

And another.

For probably 7 days in a row, we watched a movie every night. And I’m not going to blame it on my parents - I was the one asking to watch the movies half the time.

Then it’s the end of the holidays. I go back to school - but something feels different.

Suddenly I’m not springing out of bed anymore.

I don’t feel as excited every day. And I find myself just waiting for the next movie I can watch.

Then, on one Thursday a few weeks ago, something crazy happened.

My whole school found out about my YouTube channel.

Everyone in my year.

And considering I’ve made some pretty sensitive videos - you can imagine how that went down.

When I walked into school that first day after it had gotten out, I felt everyone staring at me. Judging me.

Maybe they were, maybe I was just imagining it - I don’t know, but that’s how I felt.

I felt this constant anxiety, paranoia.

So then when I got home, I found myself drawn to watching movies, to watching netflix, to watching YouTube - even more.

But now, I wasn’t always just watching it with my family. I was sat there, until 10pm, messing up my sleep schedule, binging movies on my own, wrapped up in a blanket.

And this is where the problem comes in.

See, there’s nothing inherently wrong with watching movies.

I still watch movies. At the start, I described how my whole family, we watched a movie all together.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

But then something changed.

Because I had watched movies so much, I wasn’t enjoying my life as much anymore.

A few of the movies that we watched were Indian movies, specifically Tamizh action movies, where the main hero beats everyone up, solos 200 people and saves the day.

But the thing is, that’s pretty insane compared to my everyday life.

This is just fundamentally how the dopamine reward systems work. I got used to seeing something so exciting, so stimulating - and so in comparison, when my everyday life obviously wasn’t as stimulating, it seemed boring in comparison.

I found I was just dragging myself through every day, waiting for the next time I can watch one of these movies, or go on Netflix, or go on YouTube.

Because of the stimulation, I found my ability to just be in the present moment was severely reduced. I couldn’t be happy just with what I had.

But then, it somehow got even worse.

After my Youtube channel got out, suddenly I felt terrible. Whether that was because of the situation itself, or because my mental health wasn’t actually as good as I thought it was at the time, I don’t know.

But either way, my mind was filled with all these negative, anxious, paranoid thoughts.

Does she know about it? What does he think about me? Are they talking about me? Are they laughing at me?

So I used movies, Netflix, social media, all of this - as a form of escapism.

I used it to escape my life, and numb all these negative thoughts.

But the problem is - these negative thoughts, the problem, is still going to be there when I turn off the screen. When I finish watching, nothing has changed.

Because I haven’t actually confronted the problem - I have just momentarily distracted myself from it.

I found a sense of peace and security in watching these films, because I could forget about all my problems, and watch the hero save the day.

I could invest my time and attention in someone else’s life instead of my own.

Whilst I was watching someone else saving the day, winning the prize, whatever - I was imagining that was me. “Woah, isn’t that guy so cool”, instead of improving whatever shitstorm I’m in at the moment.

But this really is the big problem.

I have something negative in my life → I distract myself with movies → Negative thing only gets worse → I distract myself again.

This is how addiction forms.

And before you know it, your whole life has wasted away.

So you’ve really got to take an honest, objective look at yourself, at your situation - and ask yourself:

Are you watching this movie to enjoy it? Genuinely just because you want to relax, unwind, and share a fun experience with family or friends?

Or are you watching it because there’s some problem in your life that you’re not confronting, so you’re distracting yourself instead?

Because that problem is not going to go away, unless you do something about it.

So I know it sounds like a cringe Instagram motivational quote - but are you going to watch someone else achieve their dreams, or be the hero in your own movie?