It’s midnight. You know you should go to bed. Tomorrow’s alarm is already looming in your mind. But the cliffhanger is too good, and your thumb finds the “Next Episode” button almost by reflex. By morning, you’ll be groggy, annoyed with yourself, and vowing to “sleep early tonight.” And yet, the cycle repeats.
Is this just weak willpower? A failure of discipline? Not quite. What’s happening here is bigger, older, and wired into all of us. Late-night binge-watching is one of the clearest examples of evolutionary mismatch—the clash between instincts shaped in the savannah and a world of infinite screens.
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