Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, so here’s some fun news to burst your bubble about true love beating all odds: almost 50% of Netflix users are cheating on their partners. Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it sounds (okay, kinda). It turns out that people are cheating on their loved ones by watching Netflix without them. We get it. Sometimes it’s just really hard to stop binge-watching episodes of Narcos even though your significant other is stuck in traffic.
According to a recent study, 46% of Netflix users don’t want wait for their partner to watch their favorite show. That’s pretty crazy considering the rabid fan base of hits like House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, and Stranger Things. This might not yet be reaching epidemic levels, but the numbers are truly troubling. “Why wait when you can watch on your phone, computer, tablet or TV?” some people are wondering. And they don’t care who they hurt!
The first time Netflix studied cheating (again, the act of watching a TV show before your partner, not actual cheating, which would be a weird thing for a streaming service to look at) was in 2013. “Four years later, cheating has increased three times and has become a common behavior around the world,” Netflix said in a press release.
This latest survey was conducted in late December of last year. It’s based on 30,267 responses from participants of different genders and ages from countries all over the globe. And that isn’t the end of the cheating: 60% of Netflix users say that that would continue to cheat if they were assured they could get away with it. “And once you cheat, you can’t stop: 81% of cheaters are repeat offenders and 44% have cheated 3+ times,” Netflix added.
Obviously, most people don’t plan to cheat. 80% of the people surveyed said they didn’t formulate a plan to cheat. It’s likely just a spur of the moment thing that gets away from them. I mean, who wants to wait to find out what happened to Barb? But Netflix makes TV watching so easy. You might have planned to just read a book (yeah right) but then one thing leads to another and you end up watching every episode of Santa Clarita Diet before your partner comes home from yoga. “The trigger for the growing trend in cheating? Two-thirds (66%) of cheaters said that ‘the shows are just so good we can’t stop bingeing,” says Netflix.
If you’re afraid your partner is cheating on you, your best bet is to stay up late with them because 25 percent of cheating happens when one partner is sleeping. So don’t go to bed early because that bum is just going to watch your favorite show without you. You’ll wake up and wonder why your Netflix just jumped ahead five episodes and they’ll have some weak excuse about letting their co-workers use their account. Plus, they aren’t going to want to go back and re-watch those episodes with you. Well, maybe they will. Netflix shows are pretty good. You can watch Kevin Spacey smugly look into the camera over and over again and never get tired of it.
