YouTube and TikTok short-form videos increase boredom, finds study

While many pick up their phones when they’re bored, researchers say the endless scrolling on TikTok and YouTube shorts could actually be contributing to increased boredom levels.

Not only this, but the doom scrolling can lead to people feeling less satisfied, less engaged, and even less meaningful.

In a new study from the University of Toronto Scarborough’s Department of Psychology, over 1,000 participants were studied to analyze their behavior and the impact digital media has on their moods.

They were first asked to spend 10 minutes consuming short-form content before then being asked to watch a single longer-form video of a similar length.

Across seven experiments, a casual relationship between boredom and digital switching was found. When the participants were bored, they switched videos in the belief this would help them avoid the feeling.

“Switching between videos and within video, however, led not to less boredom but more boredom; it also reduced satisfaction, reduced attention, and lowered meaning,” write the researchers in their paper.

As such, the findings suggest that attempts to avoid the empty feeling through digital switching can sometimes exacerbate it. The enjoyment from watching videos is thought to be from immersing oneself in the clip rather than swiping through them.

While the study has thrown up findings that many doom scrollers may not like, the team behind the research says it has raised more questions than it has answered.

With digital switching having become inevitable due to the platforms that are most popular adopting short-form content as the go-to (TikTok and YouTube Shorts), the team say future investigation is needed to “explore whether there exists an optimal level of switching and the most adaptive ways to engage with videos and online articles…

“It would be intriguing to examine whether our findings replicate when altering the speed of a video, as some people prefer to watch content at twice the speed.”

Featured Image: via Ideogram

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