The Coronavirus pandemic has spread its tentacles to the four corners of the Earth, infecting millions and bringing normal life screeching to a halt.
Without a vaccine, governments of the world have been forced to impose mandated quarantines, all the while encouraging people to stay at home and practice social distancing. For businesses big and small, COVID-19 has completely upended the very definition of a ‘normal working day,’ but there are still some companies in high demand due to the lockdown.
Take Netflix, as an example. Data pulled together by Kill the Cable Bill has revealed that Netflix subscribers in the United States have been averaging 3+ hours of streaming per day.
According to the site, Netflix users watched an average of two hours of content per day in 2019. By 2020, and given the current Coronavirus shutdown across the United States, Nielsen has found that the social distancing protocols could cause a 61% increase in streaming video content. A quick calculation reveals that, in just 12 short months, the average number of hours spent watching Netflix has jumped considerably for those in the United States.
Of course, these are exceptional times, and without any clearly defined endpoint, it’s likely that Netflix will continue to experience this surge in demand until the lockdown is lifted. As a matter of fact, across the pond, European regulatory bodies urged people to stream content in standard definition wherever possible, so as to ease the pressure on Internet providers and ensure there’s enough bandwidth to go around. That’s a sentence you don’t read every day.
And Netflix? Well, its stock market value has soared during the current crisis, as isolated viewers turn to fictional worlds to distract them from the one outside the window.