Binging the Loneliness Away? A Study on Streaming Habits and Loneliness Levels of Emerging Adults in Portugal

Authors

Abstract

The technological advances of the 21st century have changed audiences' media consumption habits. Audiences are no longer tied to schedules and breaks like on traditional television but can now have access to entire series in one sitting which can lead to compulsive audiovisual consumption, known as binge-watching.

This research aims to understand whether there is a relationship between the levels of loneliness of Portuguese emerging adults and the practice of compulsive streaming consumption. It is a quantitative study, with an N = 337 aged 18 to 30 and uses a questionnaire to collect data for statistical analysis.

Results show that there is a very significant relationship between the amount of time young people spend streaming and their levels of loneliness, and a very significant relationship between participant´s levels of loneliness and recurrent binge-watching behavior, also higher levels of loneliness are associated with compulsive consumption of audiovisual content via streaming platforms.

Author Biographies

Catarina Feio, Departamento de Comunicação e Arte, Universidade de Aveiro

Catarina Feio is a PhD candidate in the doctoral program in New Media at the University of Aveiro (2022 - present), holds a master’s degree in Multimedia Communication (2020-2022) and a degree in New Communication Technologies (2017-2020) from the same institution. Her areas of interest are media consumption, news consumption, loneliness, political participation, and online political discourse.  Her target population is the young generation residing in Portugal.

Lídia Oliveira, Universidade de Aveiro, Departamento de Comunicação e Arte

Lídia Oliveira holds a degree in Philosophy from the University of Coimbra (1990), a master’s degree in Educational Technology from the University of Aveiro, in partnership with the University of Valenciennes (France) and Mons (Belgium) (1995), and a PhD in Communication Sciences and Technologies (University of Aveiro,2002).

In 2009-2019 post-doctorate at CES – Center for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra; in 2010 degree of Aggregation in Communication Sciences and Technologies; in 2013-2014 post-doctorate/visiting researcher at the Institut Interdisciplinaire d'Anthropologie du Contemporain, from the École Des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales de Paris. In 2021-2023 degree in Psychology (in progress, 120 ECTS completed) at the University of Coimbra.

In 2020-2021 Fellow at Fundación Carolina (https://www.fundacioncarolina.es), at the Instituto de Cultura y Tecnologia – Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and in 2023 Fellow at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She is Editor of the Journal of Digital Media & Interaction.

José Manuel Martins, Universidade de Aveiro, Departamento de Ciências Sociais, Políticas e do Território

Jose Manuel Martins is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social, Political and Territorial Sciences at the University of Aveiro. He has a degree in Environmental Engineering (U. Aveiro), has a graduate degree in Environmental and Applied Fluid Dynamics (Belgium) and a PhD in Sciences Applied to the Environment (U. Aveiro). 

He participated in several national and European research projects. He is a member of the research group GETIN – Research Center on Territory and Innovation - and member of the Research Unit GOVCOPP - Governance, Competitiveness and Public Policy. He was Vice-President for the Environment at CCDRC - Coordination and Regional Development Commission of Centro Region - between 2005 and 2007. José Manuel Martins is author and co-authored over 60 papers presented at national and international conferences or published in scientific journals and books

Downloads

Published

2025-12-09

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 41 (2025): Estudos em Comunicação

Section

Artigos

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported License.

Estudos em Comunicação/Communication Studies is an Open Access journal. All its content is freely available without charge to the user or his institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. Estudos em Comunicação, by Labcom, is licensed under a Creative Commons Atribuição-NãoComercial-SemDerivações 3.0 Unported License. By submitting your work to Estudos em Comunicação/Communication studies you confirm you are the author and own the copyright, that the content is original and previously unpublished, and that you agree to the licensing terms.