As I researched this column, ironically, I had the TV on in the background. I rented the first season of “Fargo” from the UST library and ravenously binged it. And I’m glad that I picked “Fargo.” There was only one season available at the library, meaning my commitment to it would last ten episodes, 45 minutes each, coming out to 8 hours total. After a long week, I did not mind spending part of my Saturday on the couch.

But “Fargo” is one of the shorter shows that I’ve watched. Freshman year of college I followed Don Draper through every cocktail and extramarital affair that he could muster in “Mad Men.” Sophomore year this habit only snowballed as I dipped my feet into shows like “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” “Community,” “Breaking Bad,” “True Detective,” etc.

It’s easy to get sucked into TV; discovering quality entertainment nowadays is not a hard thing to do. Because there are so many thing fighting to grab our attention, the standards rise. Hence TV shows that are just average, or even just start out average, quickly fall by the wayside. And this is great for us because we are bombarded by a lot of good TV, but it also makes it hard for us to put down the remote. Shows have to be grip us within the first five minute or we can just change the channel to something else.

The big problem comes with boredom. If you’re channel surfing on the couch and nothing good is on TV, you might be more inclined to find amusement elsewhere. Problem is, nowadays, there is always something good on TV, whether you find it on cable, on demand, Netflix, HBO GO, Hulu or a plethora of other *cough* erm websites *cough*.

And with so many good TV shows, it’s not as if people finish a show and go, “Wow! That was great! I guess I’m done with TV now!” You want to maintain the level of engagement of the first program, and what better way to maintain that sweet screen high than to start another show.

I generally found two categories of articles during my research for this piece: “CHECK OUT THIS SUPER COOL LISTICLE OF 25 SHOWS YOU SHOULD BINGE WATCH OVER CHRISTMAS BREAK” and its less popular cousin, “Feelings of loneliness and depression linked to binge watching.”

A lot of the time binge watching is something you do when you’re riding solo on the couch on Friday night with nothing but your friend Papa John and the lovable twosome Ben & Jerry.

And that’s okay. People don’t need to be in constant interaction, but I think that boredom is relieved too often with TV, something that has only become more addicting and easy to access. It’s an activity that doesn’t require much engagement from the viewer, which makes it easy to go on a season-long bender. Sitting around and doing nothing doesn’t mean sitting idly on the couch anymore — whether you want to laugh, cry or gasp in horror, Hollywood has got you covered.

Yoon Hi Sung and Eun Yeon Kang at the University of Texas at Austin conducted a survey on how often 18- to 29-year-olds watched TV, how often they had feelings of loneliness, depression and self-regulation deficiency and how often they binge watched TV. After surveying 316 young adults, they found that the more lonely and depressed the study participants were, the more likely they were to binge watch TV, using this activity distance themselves from negative feelings.

Many news outlets are quoting this study because this is one of the few done on the phenomenon. Before the study, most of the anti-binge watching articles I had read were wagging fingers telling readers not to sit down in front of the TV for hours because of the importance of other things. The researchers were able to conclude that binge watching could no longer be viewed as a harmless albeit addictive behavior.

“Physical fatigue and problems such as obesity and other health problems are related to binge-watching, and they are a cause for concern. When binge-watching becomes rampant, viewers may start to neglect their work and their relationships with others,” Sung said.

This is also an interesting point to apply to college life. On one hand, our schedules are crazy. But yesterday I watched three movies to veg out after a week of crushing deadlines and 2-a.m. bedtimes. Could I have been doing something more productive and social? Definitely. Did I feel that I deserved to treat myself? Yes. But isn’t that how binge watching can start?

We use our schedules as an excuse to sit down in front of the TV, but the fact that TV is entertaining and never-ending is both a blessing and a curse. It can be a method of catharsis, but getting stuck in it can be troublesome. It’s important to do what makes you happy, but when that thing has you continuously couch-bound, it’s important to seek happiness outside of a TV.

Jeffrey Langan can be reached at lang5466@stthomas.edu.