Browsing through videos on TikTok or YouTube can be a gamble, with gems hiding between mediocre attempts, but researchers have found that switching to a different video or skipping back and forth within the same video actually bores people more.
Dr. Katy Tam of the University of Toronto Scarborough, the lead author of the study, said boredom is closely linked to attention.
“We get bored when there’s a gap between our engagement and the engagement we’d like to have,” she said. “When people are constantly switching between videos, they lose interest in the videos and look for something more interesting. That can lead to increased boredom.”
The results seem to be consistent with other studies: As the team notes, previous research has shown that while relieving boredom is one reason people use social media or smartphones, using these technologies appears to make the feeling worse.
In an article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Tam and colleagues report how they conducted seven experiments with a total of more than 1,200 participants.
The first study, with 140 participants, found that people were more likely to switch between videos when they perceived the content to be more boring. The second study—an online survey with 231 participants—found that people thought the ability to skip a video or switch to another one would 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 college students suggested that participants felt more bored when they were allowed to jump back and forth within a video than when they were not. Results from 159 college students showed that they felt greater levels of boredom when they were provided with a collection of five-minute videos to jump between, rather than a single ten-minute video.
The researchers found similar results when they repeated the latter experiment with 174 students who were allowed to select their own videos on YouTube – although the effect was smaller.
However, when they looked at the results from 175 participants across a wider age range, they found no difference in boredom when participants were given five-minute videos to rotate between or a single 10-minute video to watch. Furthermore, unlike the previous experiments, the order in which participants completed the tasks did affect the level of boredom they reported.
One possible explanation for the differences could be demographic factors, Tam said. He pointed out that the later experiments involved participants from a wider age range and with a higher average age than the earlier experiments.
“We speculated that people of different ages might have different habits when it comes to watching and switching between videos,” she said. “How people consume videos and how this impacts boredom may vary by age and digital media habits, but more research is needed to explore this.”
Ultimately, it can be worth taking your time before clicking the fast-forward or skip buttons and looking for ways to stay focused while watching videos, Tam said.
“Our research shows that people fast-forward or skip videos to avoid boredom, but this behavior can actually bore them more,” she said. “Just as we pay for an immersive experience at the movies, the fun often comes from immersing ourselves in videos rather than swiping through them.”
