The wrong way to avoid boredom
When you switch from video to video, you may be making yourself more bored, according to research.
I think a lot about what our innate drive for new things does to us in a world of infinite new stuff, which is why I was intrigued when a recent study offered some clues when it comes to the videos we watch.
The study, published earlier this year in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, examined a common behavior: You’re on your phone, watching a short-form video, when you decide to switch to the next one. Then the next. And the next. Then you get to another video and you fast-forward to the good part.
Researchers described this behavior as digital switching. In the study, they focused on two specific forms of it:
Switching between videos
Fast-forwarding through videos
And here’s the kicker—they discovered through a series of psychological experiments that digital switching like this can actually make you more bored.
We switch because we’re bored.
In the study, researchers found that boredom is driving our urge to jump around online.
“People often switch between videos and fast-forward through them on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Netflix. We show that people consume media this way to avoid boredom,” researchers wrote in the paper.
Of course these platforms have supercharged this behavior, making it easy to hop from one video to the next with the simple flick of a thumb. YouTube encourages fast-forwarding by showing you the most replayed moments and chapters in a video.
But it makes us even more bored.
When we digital switch, it’s like we’re trying to solve our boredom on the fly. We pull out our phones to escape something boring happening in real life. Then, once we’re locked into an infinite scroll, we’re constantly trying to escape boredom with something even newer and more entertaining.
But, the researchers said in the paper, this behavior actually does the opposite.
“This switching behavior makes people feel more bored, less satisfied, less engaged, and less meaningful in some instances,” they wrote.
Instead of switching, immerse in something good.
I’ve written before about the challenges of staying present, juggling too many things at work, and the proliferation of new things. This study is another data point to think about for our relationships with digital experiences, and more specifically, short-form video.
When you find yourself digital switching, maybe that’s a cue to shift your behavior. Maybe you don’t need to keep searching through a bottomless feed for the perfect video clip. Instead, look for one valuable experience that you can stick with for a while, immersing yourself in it.
“Enjoyment may be better attained by immersing oneself in videos rather than swiping through them,” researchers wrote.
Thanks for reading.
Eric