Is Netflix Getting Worse? A Data Scientist Analyzes 5,000 Shows

Introduction

We’ve all been there. It’s Friday night, you have your snacks ready, you open Netflix, and... you scroll. And scroll. Twenty minutes later, your food is cold, and you’re still trying to decide between a mediocre action movie and a documentary about competitive cheese rolling.

It feels like there’s more to watch than ever, but it’s getting harder to find something good. Is this just a feeling, or is it a measurable fact?

As a data scientist, I don't rely on feelings. I rely on numbers. To answer the question, "Is Netflix getting worse?", I downloaded a dataset of over 5,000 Netflix movies and TV shows, complete with release years and user ratings.

Here’s what the data has to say about the "Streaming Wars."

The Data: Quantity vs. Quality

My hypothesis was simple: In the race to build the biggest library, Netflix has sacrificed quality for quantity.

First, let’s look at the sheer volume of content released each year.

As you can see, the number of titles added to the platform has exploded in the last decade. Netflix is a content factory, churning out hundreds of new titles every year.

But what about the quality? I analyzed the average IMDb rating for all titles released in a given year.

The correlation is striking. As the volume of content (the blue line) has skyrocketed, the average rating (the red line) has seen a noticeable decline. The data suggests that to maintain its staggering release schedule, Netflix is greenlighting projects that might not have made the cut ten years ago.

The Insight: Where is the Quality Drop Happening?

So, is everything on Netflix getting worse? Not necessarily. When I broke the data down by genre, a clearer picture emerged.

The Losers: Genres like Action, Horror, and Romantic Comedies have seen the sharpest decline in average ratings. These are often "filler" content—cheap to produce and easy to market.

The Winners: Interestingly, Documentaries and International (Non-English) series have maintained, and in some cases increased, their average ratings. Shows like Squid Game and Dark prove that Netflix can still produce world-class television when it focuses on unique storytelling over mass appeal.

Conclusion

So, is Netflix getting worse? The data points to a complicated "yes."

The average piece of content on Netflix today is likely of lower quality than it was seven years ago. The platform is flooded with mediocre titles designed to keep you subscribed, not necessarily to impress you.

However, the gems are still there. They are just harder to find buried under the mountain of average content. The key takeaway? Stop scrolling through the "Trending Now" row. If you want quality, dig into the Documentaries and International categories. The algorithm might not always serve them up, but the data says they are worth the search.