In this time of social distancing and self-quarantining amidst the coronavirus pandemic, streaming has become our safe haven. Our refuge to fight off boredom and perhaps finally catch up on Peaky Blinders. There’s been so much streaming in fact that Netflix has been asked to slow down streaming rates to prevent an internet overload.
Of course, streaming libraries can be overwhelming. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve put on Netflix with the intention of watching something but can’t decide because there are too many options to choose from. When that happens, I’ll usually put a number of movies and shows into my queue with the intention of eventually watching them. Key word being ‘eventually.’
But what if you actually had the time to watch every single thing on Netflix? Could you do it? And how long would it take? Well, according to What’s On Netflix, there’s currently 2.2 million minutes of content available on the platform. To put that into perspective, that amount of content would take just over four years and more than 36,000 hours to go through.
Not only that, but Netflix has, as of March, 5,817 shows to watch and 50,000 titles total (“when you include all the episodes for every series in a single number”). Hulu, meanwhile, has more than 4,000 movies and TV shows and Disney Plus, a newer streaming service, has 922 as of now.
But the problem with the Netflix challenge is, they’re constantly adding new content at an alarming rate. The service has increased their number of original programming with 25% of all content being original and back in February, they passed 1,500 Netflix originals and are expected to go over 2,000 by the end of the year.
So, even if you decided to try and go through everything on the platform, it would never end. That is, unless the pandemic lasts so long that Netflix is forced to shut down all of its countless productions. Then someone could conceivably do it. But that’s worst case scenario.