While I’m technically 26, it’s safe to say I have the lifestyle of a 40-year-old. While I may have been able to pull all-nighters in my late teens/early twenties, my idea of a ‘wild night’ is now staying out until midnight. While I love catching up with friends and having a few drinks, I would much rather be eating pizza in my cosy trackies than out at a loud club. I’m a total homebody, and I know I’m not alone. Thanks to the ever-growing self-care movement to a rising amount of people identifying as ‘introverts’, more and more young women are choosing to stay in over going out. There’s even a newsletter called the Girls Night In club dedicated to this very thing!
Yep, JOMO (joy of missing out) has officially trumped FOMO, and it turns out, this is actually a great thing for the planet. New research published in the journal, Joule, revealed that staying home and watching Netflix far better for the environment than having a night out on the town. The study revealed that Americans are increasingly spending more time at home, leading to a 1.8 percent decrease in their national energy consumption. Interestingly, energy use went down even though they’re spending nearly four more hours watching TV and using computers now than they did in 2003 — which researchers attribute to the fact that staying in means less car travel and energy use from non-residential buildings.
While this study was from the US, information published in the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed that a similar downward trend is occurring in Australia. “On average, each Australian household used 141 gigajoules of energy in 2015-16 — that’s a 1 percent decrease from 2014-15 and a nearly 6 percent decrease over the decade since 2005-06,” ABS Environment and Agriculture spokesperson Lauren Binns says. While this can be partially explained by in an increase in the use of more energy efficient appliances, we like to think that our enthusiastic binge-watching has a little something to do with it, too. Yep, we’re officially giving you permission to cocoon yourself in a blanket and catch up on RuPaul’s Drag Race tonight. The environment will thank you!
