This Is How Much TV Series Are Impacting Viewers

Most of us watch television series. They are amusing and funny, and they are a good way to beat boredom. Watching them with family and friends provide us with a good bonding experience, but they are enjoyable to watch on their own too.

However, many people might not realize how much these TV shows are impacting all aspects of our lives. It is said that they are influencing what we are shopping, what we are eating, and how we are dressing, etc. Some even claim that our personal opinions can change depending on the type of shows we are watching at a certain time.

In fact, according to Dr. Deborah Perez (Clinical Psychologist and PsyD from Sao Paulo’s State University), these media products even help shape our personality as a whole.

“Human beings become who they are by interacting with the world,” Perez said.

“Doing things, producing things, consuming things, relating to other people. In this sense, there is a direct influence of media products on our subjectivity.”

Now, these are not merely assertions rather they are backed up by some pretty strong evidence. For understanding the point, let’s take the example of the hugely popular show The Queen’s Gambit.

The Queen’s Gambit

The Queen’s Gambit was released in October 2020 and soon became Netflix’s most-watched scripted miniseries. The Scott Frank directed show follows the life of Beth Harmon (played by Anya Taylor-Joy) who fights her way to the top of the chess world while dealing with issues of drugs and alcohol dependency.

The coming-of-age period drama miniseries became a huge commercial success and went on to receive critical acclaim. But what was an even greater achievement for the show was that it turned the idea of ‘chess’ from an intellectual and complex sport into something glamorous and pop.

Since there is a direct link between interest in a show and how that leads into an associated online search, we can measure The Queen’s Gambit’s influence on viewers by Google searches. And it is easily noticeable that the show has made a huge impact on the audience’s behavior.

Since it first hit the screens, the Google searches for ‘Chess’ have risen an incredible 88%, while the keywords ‘Chess Move’, ‘Queen’s Gambit’, and ‘Sicilian Defence’ also saw an enormous increase in their searches. Not only that, the number of players on ‘chess.com’ soared 500%.

Unit sales of chess sets also jumped 87% in the US while chess book sales also increased an unbelievable 603%.

The show also gave an enormous boost to the Queen’s Gambit book which has now become a best-seller. The Walter Tevis written novel was first published in 1983.