Because for many, Netflix subscription is a shared good. E.g. I pay for the highest plan, and let my wife, my mom & my siblings use it. I'm not going to ask all of them every month if they're using it; I just pay $15 and everyone can watch whenever they feel like it.

There's a lot to be said for reliability factor too. I could pay for just the middle tier and handle occasional collisions (more people wanting to watch at the same time than the service tier allows). But it's easier to fork out extra $5 and avoid the issue altogether.

I rarely use mine but keep it for 2 reasons.

1. I "feel" like there might be something I want to watch at some point. Just kinda in the back of my head.

2. Its 10$/mo that I'm not even going to notice missing.

As their price increases I'll likely cancel. There is something about being at or under 10$ vs being over that triggers me to reevaluate even if I still wouldn't notice the extra couple bucks.

This is me as well.

At $10 I’m not even that bothered about content quality.

These days content is spread out over a bunch of providers, some much more expensive due to movies, sports and live events.

I’m paying for four separate streaming services, and at $10 netflix just defaults.

At a higher price quality content will have to increase.

I'm not saying they're not related, just not linearly so. For one, screen time is scalar and subscription is binary. My screen time only needs to be high enough for subscription binary to remain active across time. It's possible that screen time is simply the most highly correlated and easiest to track metric they use, which is likely. Another possibility is that they do recognize that screen time probably has logarithmic falloff as it correlates to subscriptions, Fortnite is eating enough of the screen time away that it's in the range that is highly likely to influence whether or not they keep their subscription.

Like this

https://i.ibb.co/khfR4FQ/Notes-190119-221151-309-1.jpg

Same reason as gym members?

Yeah, neither of those make sense to me. You can easily cancel netflix online and the last gym membership I just called and cancelled because I was moving. I've heard about gyms "requiring" you to cancel in person but I feel like a threaten to do a charge back would get them to cancel over the phone.

Why are people paying for subscriptions they don't use?

Laziness

Also excessive optimism. "I will finally start excercising next week, I swear!"

I mean I use my gym membership, but I think the analogy is wrong. People don't use their gym membership because it's just an office to do (body)work in. Netflix is entirely consumable for the purchaser, not much work involved. Laziness might still be the answer in common.

Some get it for free, like certain T-Mobile customers.