While it’s a common practice to scroll through online videos when bored, new research suggests that swiping through clips without watching them in their entirety can actually exacerbate boredom.
Picture this: You’re sitting at home feeling bored with little motivation to get up and do something productive, so you reach for your phone. You open TikTok and start scrolling, but nothing is quite grabbing your attention — so you scroll faster, not watching any clips in their entirety but instead watching a few seconds of countless different videos in search of feeling entertained.
We’ve all been there. And with the abundance of entertainment available online, it’s no wonder we look to our phones to cure our boredom. But what we hope will be a solution may actually be making things worse.
That’s according to new research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, which found that digital switching — the action of quickly switching between videos and fast-forwarding through them — actually makes boredom worse.
According to the study, previous research has shown that, on average, individuals switch between different mobile applications 101 times every day, alternate between content
on computers every 19 seconds, switch to a secondary task like social media every six minutes while studying, and check smartphones around 35 times a day.
Researchers at the University of Toronto hypothesized that people often engage in digital switching to avoid and escape boredom, and that doing so actually makes boredom worse.
They were correct.
The study, which consisted of seven experiments with a total of more than 1,200 participants, found that while individuals expected digital switching to make them less bored, it actually made them more so, while watching videos in their entirety reduced boredom.
In one of the experiments, participants first had to watch a 10-minute YouTube video without the option to skip through it. In the second part, they were given the option to switch through seven different five-minute videos within 10 minutes.
Following the experiment, participants reported feeling less bored when they watched the stand-alone video. They also found the experience of viewing the single video to be more satisfying, engaging, and meaningful than when they swiped through the seven videos.
Lead study author Katy Tam, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto, suggests that digital switching may increase boredom because viewers don’t have time to understand or engage with the content, making it appear relatively meaningless.
“If people want a more enjoyable experience when watching videos, they can try to stay focused on the content and minimize digital switching,” Tam said in a news release. “Just like paying for a more immersive experience in a movie theater, more enjoyment comes from immersing oneself in online videos rather than swiping through them.”
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