A certain amount of online watching can offer a reset and other healthy benefits.

How you feel when you step away, and other signs, may signal it’s too much.

A few reflective questions can let you throw away the guilt and simply enjoy the pleasure… or not.

“What is it about us as a culture that we have to put ‘guilty’ in front of ‘pleasure’?” -Alexis Soloski, New York Times culture reporter

I can’t even quantify how many women came into my office, back in the day, confessing guilt for binge-watching Gilmore Girls. Or Friends. Or whatever. Sometimes, they admitted watching it over and over again. We spent hours assessing if it was a problem (it usually wasn’t) and helping them feel okay—maybe even good—about this secret “habit.” Perhaps their newborn had just gotten released from the neonatal ICU, or a parent was sick, or their job was a burnout or their partner was cheating. Binging Gilmore Girls? What a healthy response! They could’ve been smoking or drinking in excess, or working on a revenge scenario to slash their partner’s tires or make off with their earnings for Bermuda.

There’s flak everywhere you look in our (historically Puritan-dominant) culture about screentime. And, of course, it’s true: we can get addicted (and surely are) to screens, as well as to drinks, substances, sex, or food. Having an unhealthy relationship with anyone or anything is bad for us.

But we........

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