Are you feeling bored? Avoid switching between roles and videos online, says Study

If you try to escape boredom by switching between short videos and clips on YouTube, Netflix or TikTok, that behavior will paradoxically increase your boredom, according to a new study from the American Psychological Association.

“If people want a more enjoyable experience when watching videos, they can try to stay focused on the content and minimize digital switching,” said Katy Tam, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto and lead author of the study, in a press release. . “Just like you pay for a more immersive experience at a movie theater, you’ll get more enjoyment from immersing yourself in online videos instead of swiping through them.”

“Digital switching (including fast-forwarding through videos) can make the content of online videos seem meaningless as people don’t have time to engage with or understand the content,” Tam added.

While researchers define boredom as an “averse state of wanting but being unable to engage in satisfying activities,” this emotion is linked to attention. Boredom arises in situations where novelty, meaning, autonomy and/or challenge are lacking. Prolonged periods of boredom can cause people to experience a wide range of unpleasant emotions, such as restlessness, frustration, sadness and a deep sense of emptiness.

In fact, people who are prone to chronic experiences of boredom are much more likely to experience depression, anxiety, stress, apathy and lower life satisfaction. “Boredom increases the desire to escape the current situation. It functions to inform people that current circumstances have no meaning and to motivate the pursuit of something more meaningful and fulfilling,” the authors wrote in their study published in the journal The Guardian. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

“Strangely enough, however, avoiding boredom is not particularly effective at relieving it. This seems to be especially the case when it comes to the use of digital media,” she added. “All things considered, using digital media to reduce boredom seems ineffective; not only that, it seems to make it even worse. Why might this be the case? We investigate whether the answer lies in the way people interact with digital media: they switch quickly between content.”

Tam and team recruited 231 students from the University of Toronto Scarborough who first completed an online survey. They were all also part of experiments that involved watching a ten-minute YouTube video without any option to fast forward or switch to another video. In another experiment part, participants were allowed to cycle through seven different five-minute videos within a 10-minute period.

After each experiment, participants reported their levels of boredom, satisfaction, and other emotions. The researchers noted that participants felt less bored in the no-switch condition, but only when it was first presented.

“When participants switched between videos and within a video, they felt more bored, less satisfied, less engaged and less meaningful than when they were not allowed to switch. Even with the freedom to watch videos of personal choice and interest on YouTube, participants still felt more bored when they switched digital than when they did not,” the team noted. “They were unable to fully engage with and make meaning of the current content, as evidenced by lower attention and lower meaning when switching conditions; withdrawal and meaninglessness thus led to increasing feelings of boredom and dissatisfaction.”

“The results of our psychological experiments thus provide valuable insights for people who want to make informed decisions about their media consumption habits,” the researchers said.