Browse videos on TikTok or YouTube can be a hit-and-miss affair, with gems lurking amid mediocre efforts. But researchers found that switching to a different video, or skipping forward and backward in the same one, actually made people more bored.
Dr. Katy Tam at the University of Toronto Scarborough, the lead author of the research, said boredom is closely linked to attention.
“We feel bored when there’s a gap between how engaged we are and how engaged we want to be,” she said. “When people keep switching through videos, they become less engaged with the videos and look for something more interesting. This can lead to increased feelings of boredom.”
The results seem to be consistent with other studies: as the team notes, previous research has suggested that while boredom is a driving force for people to use social media or smartphones, using such technology appears to make the feeling worse.
Writing in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: GeneralTam and colleagues report how they conducted seven experiments involving a total of more than 1,200 participants.
The first, involving 140 participants, revealed that people tended to switch between videos more when they rated the content more boring, while the second – an online survey involving 231 participants – suggested that people thought they had the option to skip through a video or switch to another. will make watching a video less boring.
However, the team’s subsequent experiments suggest that this is not the case.
Data from a group of 166 undergraduates indicated that participants felt more bored when they were allowed to skip within a video than when they were unable to, while results from 159 undergraduates revealed that they reported higher levels or boredom when given a collection of five-minute videos. can vary between, compared to a single 10 minute video.
The researchers found similar results when the latter experiment was repeated with 174 undergraduate students who were allowed to choose their own videos from YouTube – although the size of the effect was smaller.
However, when they looked at the results of 175 participants from a broader age range, they found no difference in reported boredom when the participants were given five minute videos to switch between, or a single 10 minute video to watch. What’s more, unlike in the earlier experiments, the order in which participants undertook the viewing tasks had an influence on their levels of reported boredom.
Tam said that one explanation for the differences could be demographics, noting that the later experiments involved participants with a wider age range and an older average age than the earlier experiments.
“We speculated that people of different ages may have different habits when it comes to watching and switching videos,” she said. “How people consume videos and how this affects boredom may differ based on age and digital media habits, but further research is needed to investigate this.”
Ultimately, Tam said, it can be worth taking your time before hitting the fast-forward or skip buttons, and finding ways to stay focused while watching videos.
“Our research shows that while people fast-forward or skip videos to avoid boredom, this behavior can actually make them feel more bored,” she said. “Just as we pay for an immersive experience in a movie theater, enjoyment often comes from immersing ourselves in videos rather than swiping through them.”
