Summer Farkas

     It seems that almost everyone uses Netflix, with countless kids and adults alike using the popular streaming service to watch TV shows and movies. In fact, 72 percent of adults in the U.S. watch Netflix as of 2025. But in spite of that, Netflix Original movies and shows are being produced significantly less than before, and their viewership is declining. 

    Netflix had one of its greatest gains of subscribers in 2020 during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as people were trapped in their homes, gaining more than 26 million global subscribers.

     Not only did this beat the Wall Street estimate, but this also beat Netflix’s own internal forecasts of subscribers. 

     “For me, my Netflix subscription was definitely pandemic-related,” Upper School Health Teacher and Coach Jonathan Tallon said. 

     Tallon has been casually watching television for a long time and can clearly remember the effects of the pandemic on certain services. While countless other companies suffered from the pandemic, most streaming services experienced a financial gain. 

     “We were all looking for something, anything, to keep us occupied,” he said.

    However, in early 2022, Netflix experienced a significant loss of over 1 million subscribers. 

But they certainly made up for that deficit in May 2023, when the company gained an estimated 9.3 million subscribers after creating stricter password-sharing rules. 

     Ever since then, Netflix has been gaining more subscribers every year. As of 2025, Netflix is reported to have over 300 million subscribers globally. 

     “I watch Netflix all the time, like once or twice per day depending on the show I’m watching,” freshman Nico Ramos said. “And I don’t watch Netflix’s shows. I watch other shows that just happen to be on Netflix.”

     This shows — no pun intended — how many people have kept their subscription because Netflix has a good variety of series aside from their Originals.

     Overall, Netflix’s growth in recent years has essentially continued to increase, even with the lower quantity of Netflix Originals and the fact that they’ve been taking longer to release them. 

     “Netflix just takes way too long to release their shows sometimes,” junior Daniel Cooper said. “It’s just too long, it totally makes sense how it would make viewership go down.”

    Some shows that have had large time gaps between seasons include “Wednesday,” “Stranger Things,” “Ginny and Georgia” and many more.  

     Netflix has supposedly been trying to focus on excellence rather than abundance, but evidently, that hasn’t helped their viewership so far. Financially, though, they’re still doing amazingly well due to other features. 

     For example, Cooper likes Netflix because it doesn’t have ads, which can be a prominent problem on other streaming platforms.    

     So, Netflix might still be worth your time in 2025. It just depends on what you want to use it for.