Watching videos at double speed may be damaging your brain! Especially for this group of people →

Wait! Before you scroll down this article, stop here and think about how fast you usually read articles like this? Do you quickly scan the main points or read word by word?

Steve is a podcast lover who subscribes to many podcasts. However, as the number of podcasts piled up, he gradually found that he couldn't listen to them all! Another podcast fanatic, Rachel Kenny, inspired him.

In order to listen to more podcasts, Rachel Kenny started to speed up her listening speed, 2x and 3x. In this way, listening for 5 hours a day is equivalent to listening to 15 hours of content, and she can listen to 20 to 40 episodes of podcasts every day...

Steve also started to try listening to podcasts at a faster speed. It felt good. When the brain gradually adapted to listening to fast conversations, the accelerated podcast became easy to understand. In fact, we can process text very quickly, and the reading speed can reach 250 to 700 words. Studies have shown that in the accelerated audio, the average person can understand 300 words per minute.

The normal speaking speed of American English speakers is about 110 to 150 words when they are talking, so it stands to reason that it should be no problem to speed up and understand the podcast.

Steve quickly turned his podcast listening speed up to 2 times the original speed. After getting used to it quickly, he decided to increase the speed to 3 times. As a result, everything started to become confusing...Steve found that he had to pay full attention to remember what was said in the podcast . Although he could understand the words, it was difficult to understand a whole sentence. After listening to it at 3 times the speed for only 20 minutes, he felt that his brain could no longer be "lit up"... The headache made him close his eyes ...

I don’t know if you have this feeling, there are too many good and interesting contents on the Internet now, and you can’t watch them all in 24 hours a day! So in recent years, more and more people have begun to choose to “ speed up” audio-visual content. Video and audio websites provide 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x and 2x viewing options, and there are various “three-minute movie watching” contents on the Internet... An APP called Rightspeed even provides the option of listening to programs at 10 times the speed .

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So, what impact will listening to podcasts or watching videos at double the speed have on us? This question is still controversial. Some people think that speeding up is fine and even beneficial . A 2021 study showed that if the teacher on the podium is recording a lecture video with PowerPoint, 85% of students hope that it can be played faster, which is more "useful" and allows them to concentrate more and get specific and useful content faster.

Speeding up podcast listening and video watching, like the speed-reading technique called “scanning,” can be a useful tool for you to proactively look for important information.

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In fact, this speed listening function was originally designed for the visually impaired. Since they usually rely more on auxiliary functions such as screen readers and text-to-speech, they can adapt to very fast speech speeds and can even increase the speed of listening to podcasts to 5-6 times the speed. They just need to get used to it.

However, some people have suggested that speeding up the browsing of content on the Internet may cause some negative effects.

A study by the American Psychological Association found that when lectures were played at 3 times the speed, students' comprehension ability plummeted . Moreover, although speeding up saves time and prevents students from being dazed by boring content, it may also affect students' beliefs and interests in learning .

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In addition, Diego Redolar, a Spanish psychologist, mentioned that there are a few points to note. First, if you are used to watching content quickly, your brain will get used to receiving this stimulation, which will make it more difficult for you to concentrate , or your attention span will be shortened, and you will have no patience . In addition, fast-paced stimulation may make you ignore necessary details, making it difficult for your brain to process the content in depth , and you will just "swallow it whole."

" This presents a risk in the developing brain before age 25, " the psychologists wrote.

Diego Redolar added: "Each video or audio file has its own unique complexity. Not to mention cultural works, such as movies, which are full of silence. These contents are processed by the amygdala in the brain, and if we speed them up, they are difficult to perceive."

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Scholars who focus on digital music culture have found that people are even speeding up when listening to songs ! Some accelerated or mixed versions of songs have become popular on Tiktok. So in 2022, Summer Walker, a musician who became popular on social media, spontaneously released an album of accelerated remixes, and the accelerated version of RAYE's single "Escapism" made by fans is even more popular than the original version of the song!

Another communication scholar said that you do save time by speeding up to listen to podcasts and watch content, but then what? You might use the saved time to watch short videos...

In the era of information explosion, it is easy for us to be "trapped" in the content and overwhelmed by the overwhelming knowledge. But in fact, for us, especially for teenagers whose brains are still in the development stage, "acceleration" is a behavior that needs to be cautious. It is likely to affect attention, memory or critical ability, as well as cognitive, emotional and social development abilities.

Therefore, in the overwhelming flow of information, filtering out more valuable and high-quality content is a more efficient option. Listening attentively and slowly at 1x speed can also help you better understand the content.

References

[1]https://onezero.medium.com/i-tried-listening-to-podcasts-at-3x-and-broke-my-brain-d8823edecb7c

[2]https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/doree/meet-the-people-who-listen-to-podcasts-at-super-fast-speeds

[3]https://english.elpais.com/technology/2024-03-17/double-speed-messages-and-videos-a-time-saver-that-can-impact-our-memory.html

[4]https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqv5x2qe8q6o

[5]https://www.forbes.com.mx/forbes-life/salud-que-son-los-speed-watchers/

[6]https://www.uoc.edu/es/news/2023/288-speedwatching-afecta-atencion-y-aprendizaje

[7]https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/09/us/podfasters-audio-accelerated-speeds-cec/index.html

[8]https://www.jstor.org/stable/26926423

[9]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2649675/

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Source: Bring Science Home (ID: steamforkids)

Author: Skin

Editor: He Tong

Proofread by Xu Lai and Lin Lin

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