Scrolling through entertaining videos on various platforms to combat boredom only ends up intensifying it.
- “Digital switching” is a form of viewing that involves quickly switching from one video to another.
- When people scroll through online videos, they are more bored, less satisfied, and less engaged.
- The enjoyment of watching videos can be better achieved by being immersed in them rather than by fast-forwarding or skipping them.
Being bored can be unpleasant and it is not easy to overcome this feeling of weariness. To escape boredom and feel stimulated, some people turn to social networks, such as Instagram, Tiktok or Netflix, to watch short videos. “One common way to view them is to skip and fast-forward through videos, a form of viewing we call ‘digital switching.’ We hypothesize that this behavior paradoxically intensifies boredom,” said researchers from the University of Toronto (Canada). To test this theory, they conducted a study published in the journal Journal of Experimental Psychology.
For the research, the team recruited 1,223 adults and students. The volunteers took part in a two-part experiment. First, all participants watched a 10-minute YouTube video in its entirety, without being able to fast-forward. Second, they were allowed to freely switch between the five-minute videos within ten minutes.
“Digital switching”: switching from one video to another intensifies boredom
“We found a bidirectional causal relationship between boredom and digital switching,” can be read in the results. When the volunteers were bored, they switched to something else and they believed that this would help them avoid boredom. However, switching from one video to another did not reduce boredom, but increased it. This behavior also reduced their satisfaction and attention. According to the authors, even when the participants were free to watch videos of their choice, “digital switching” still intensified boredom. They also noted that chronic boredom is linked to depressive symptoms, anxiety, aggression and risk-taking.
Focus on content and minimize digital changes to “live a more enjoyable experience”
Furthermore, “Digital switching can make online video content seem meaningless because people don’t have time to engage with or understand the content. (…) If people want a more enjoyable experience when watching videos, they can try to stay focused on the content and minimize digital switching. Just like paying for a more immersive experience at the movies, online videos are more enjoyable to be immersed in rather than fast-forwarding and skipping,” said Katy Tamauthor of the work.
