It’s your fault - or at least 50 per cent of you - that so many movies and TV shows are so bad

One of the biggest lies is that men can’t multitask but women can.

There may be some studies which show women are better at it, but the truth is no one is good at multitasking. Anyone who thinks they are is lying to themselves.

No matter which way you look at it, we only have finite attention, and if you divide it between two, three or four things, whatever you’re trying to do suffers.

There are some household tasks that are now so reliant on muscle memory – folding laundry, cutting up onions – that having a podcast or audiobook on at the same time is fine. Not everything demands higher-level thinking.

But the one thing you absolutely cannot do is second-screening, that is, watching something on TV while scrolling on your phone. Fifty per cent of Australians do this, according to a 2025 report from Deloitte, with women, at 61 per cent, more guilty than men, at 39 per cent.

Perhaps women for so long have been told they can multitask just so they would take on more, while the younger you are, they more likely you are to second-screen, peaking with 69 per cent among Gen Z while at the lower end, it’s 14 per cent of matures (classified as older than Boomers).

Taking in a story, understanding its plot, its themes, its characters or even being able to follow a car chase, sparks the parts of your brain that processes higher-level thinking.

It’s not just about comprehension but empathy. Storytelling, from the time we gathered around fires or in circles, is about opening our worldviews and understanding a perspective not our own. It connects us to other people and cultures we’ve never even met.

How can you possibly engage with that in good faith if you’re not even paying attention?

We’ve known for a while now that streamers, most notably Netflix, have directed writers, creators and filmmakers to account for this second-screening by dumbing down or repeating plot beats.

This past weekend, Matt Damon revealed on Joe Rogen’s podcast that Netflix had told him and Ben Affleck, who had starred in and produced a pretty decent action crime movie called The Rip for the streamer, “it wouldn’t be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phones while they’re watching”.

That’s what every artist wants to hear, that people only have your work on for background noise.

We know this is true because we’ve seen it for ourselves. Many times. Characters are frequently narrating exactly what they’re doing or what they’ve just done, talking to god knows who because you would never say to your friend, “I’m just ordering a coffee” as you both stand in line at the café.

Never mind show don’t tell, now it’s show and tell. Repeatedly.

Here’s one example. In the Netflix Christmas movie Jingle Bell Heist, at the 35-minute, 34-second mark, one character is explaining how they could break into someone’s safe.

“There’s also a second way he can get the code. He has a back-up key fob he keeps at home, and the fob gets the same code that goes to his phone,” she said.

Then, 35 seconds later, the same character comes out with this line of dialogue, “No, but she did say that there’s a key fob Sterling keeps at home that also gets the codes.”

Literally within one minute of each other. Now, sure, that could just be really bad writing and editing in a movie that was quite terrible, but we also know that the streamers are counting on a wide swath of its audience not paying attention the first time it came up.

But for the 50 per cent of those of us who were actually watching, it was clunky and throws you out of the story.

Now, you could blame the streamer for all this – and it would be oh-so-easy for it to be all Netflix’s fault – but, for better or worse, they’re responding to what the audience is doing. Although there is a definite chicken-or-the-egg thing going on.

We could also blame the tech giants for deliberately tweaking their algorithms to be as addictive as possible, no matter what the mental health consequences on a person or on society more generally.

But the onus is on us. Or it’s on the 50 per cent of people who are second-screening. For the love of everyone else, and general media literacy or narrative comprehension, please stop.

It might be your individual choice, but you are actually ruining it for everyone, because these companies are catering to the distracted.

If you want to be scrolling on your phone, firing off emails, organising kids parties or, if you’re one of the 30 per cent of second-screening men who do this, watching another video on your phone, then just do that.

Don’t also try to watch something, especially a scripted movie or TV series. Or, at least press pause if you have to pick up your phone.

If you really need background noise, put on some music, or maybe a reality TV show. Even good ones, such as MasterChef, repeat everything three times over so that about 28 minutes of actual storytelling gets stretched out to an hour and a half with ads.

The other fifty per cent of Australians are paying attention, watching with intent, and they’re being punished with increasingly mediocre offerings.

More and more shows and movies that have no purpose other than to be an engagement metric, to be a statistic in the daily top 10 lists.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. It might have been 50 per cent of audiences who are second-screening, but the year prior in 2024, it was 52 per cent. So, no matter how incremental, at least the number is going down.

If it goes down enough – shame over our weekly screentime reports might help – streamers will have to actually make more stories that stand up to being watched 100 per cent of the time. This is how we get better stuff.

As Affleck pointed out in that podcast interview, “Then you look at Adolescence and it didn’t do any of that (repetition) sh-t, and it’s f—king great, and it’s dark too. It’s tragic and it’s intense.”

Damon added that Adolescence was “the exception” but Affleck broke in the award- and audience-winning British series “demonstrates you don’t have to” to resort to tricks to give distracted viewers the bare minimum.

We should always demand better of filmmakers and studios, but we should also be demanding better of other audiences, and of ourselves.

Put your bloody phone down.