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“Don’t sit so close to the TV!” said every parent ever between 1950 and 2005, give or take. That’s over fifty years of being warned about distancing ourselves from the tube. Various reasons included: “You’ll hurt your eyes,” “You won’t be able to sleep,” and everyone’s favorite, “Because I said so.” Nearly three generations were raised with the same idea implanted in our minds: sitting too close to the television is bad for you.

This isn’t necessarily the case anymore. In fact, we’re the closest we’ve ever been to television. Heck, we’re physically holding it, cradling it in our laps and holding it up to our faces. It’s become our best friend during our grinding commutes, our quick break from the workday, and as long as you have headphones, an escape from unbearable roommates. For some of us, television is a lover as much as it is a luxury product.

In today’s on-demand culture, we finally have control over something mass produced. Thanks to queues and watchlists, we can curate our likes even further: a channel all our own. The personalization is seemingly endless, and with each new series acquisition from one of the major streaming platforms, we can further indulge in all of the series we’ve been meaning to, or dying to, revisit or watch for the first time.

The numbers prove our dedication. Recap culture is at an all-time high. Whether or not it’s hurting television is beside the point; who would have thought a solid chunk of the population would get hooked on reading an article about something they just saw? Streaming parties and binge-fests are becoming more and more the norm, especially for high school and college-aged kids who can’t afford to go out and drop fifteen precious dollars on tickets to see Mockingjay: Part I. Wouldn’t you rather stay in and binge Gilmore Girls?

We want to spend more time with television, and we are, but this isn’t anything particularly new. Ever since television became a staple of the American home, we’ve always binge-watched — it was just called “being lazy” back then. When your mother had had enough of you watching cartoons for hours on end on a Saturday, you could count on being ordered to go outside and play, thus ending your Looney Tunes binge sesh.

Nowadays, it’s become a mission amongst ourselves to plow through seasons of series in hours rather than days or weeks. Not only do we love this amped up version of watching television, we also love bragging about how far we’ve gotten in Scandal, how we just finished Breaking Bad, and how we’re all caught up and ready for the final season of Mad Men. We’re impressing ourselves by doing nothing, essentially, but it doesn’t feel like nothing — it’s all so important to us.

Even when we binge an entire series and hate it (ahem, The Killing) we still care that we hate it. That’s the whole point, really: we care more about television than ever before, and it could be because we’re physically closer to the content we’re watching.

Staring at a screen from across the room simply feels different than having the fate of Walter White unraveling in the palm of your hand while riding the subway or resting in your lap in your dorm room.

Of course, on can argue that it’s a combination of two major factors. The first being that the quality of television, including series exclusively on streaming platforms, has never been better. “The Golden Age of Television” isn’t some PR term infiltrated to viewers through subliminal messages in Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce ad campaigns — it’s all very real. Series have never been more diverse — not just in terms of plot and characters, but behind the scenes as well. Writers rooms and directors circles feature more and more people of color and class, but you already knew that if you watched the most recent Emmys ceremony.

The second argument is that advanced, personalized technology and viewing habits hit stride at similar times and go hand-in-hand, quite literally. Why wouldn’t we watch television as often as we can when it’s at our fingertips 24/7? We would be silly not to. And thanks to media mobility, individualistic viewing experiences are encouraged by the technology we use, which seems somewhat in contradiction to what’s happening within pop culture, as we all seem to be in the same boat these days: obsessed.

There isn’t necessarily a downside to this fairly new phenomenon of being both physically and metaphysically closer to television. We’re becoming keener in our criticisms by demanding more realism away from the laugh tracks and the dumbed-down network dramas that often reinforce negative stereotypes or lack diverse representation altogether.

Being physically closer to content has also triggered a need to communicate more often about television. We’re not just obsessed with the shows we love or love to hate, but are compelled to talk to someone about them before, while, and after we watch.

Whatever this means for the future of television and in turn the future of us can get a little complicated when you try to pinpoint what exactly will change and when. For now, it’s acceptable and even encouraged to be more than a little obsessed, and we’re just fine with that.

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Photos: Everett Collection