Can't watch TV series without double speed? What's wrong with young people today...

Have you noticed that nowadays you rarely watch a video or a TV series quietly at the original speed?

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But in fact, when we look back and ask people around us, there are only a few people who don’t watch TV shows or videos at double speed. Modern people seem to have collectively entered the "double speed era". When most people open a video, the first thing they do is turn on the double speed switch and start to "speed through" the video at 3x speed.

As early as 2019, a survey by the Beijing News showed that among the audience aged 18 to 40, nearly 70% (67.38%) would watch videos at double speed , and four years later, this proportion will only be higher than 70%. Some people even joked: "How to prove that you have free time in one sentence? Don't watch TV series at double speed!"

Why have we lost the ability to watch TV series at full speed today?

Time pressure is killing your speed

A "Survey Report on the Current Status of Overtime in the Workplace 2022" published in 2022 showed that 91.6% of people in the workplace need to work overtime to some extent, nearly 60% of them work overtime for an average of 1 hour, and 84.7% of them are troubled by "invisible overtime", that is, they still have to pay attention to work news after get off work.

Excessive working hours have resulted in increasingly scarce leisure time, which has also led to modern people generally facing a kind of chronic time pressure, which refers to the feeling of being urged due to the continuous shortage of time and insufficient time to complete certain tasks. This will make people feel that the pace of life is accelerating and their schedules have become unconsciously compact.

Therefore, it is no wonder that we watch TV series and videos at double speed, because leisure time is too precious to be wasted on those watered-down plots in TV series and nonsense in videos. The desire to pursue as much pleasure as possible in a limited time is the most primitive desire in the heart of every "double-speed person".

Platforms and media have also begun to take advantage of people's "speed characteristics" and carefully mark various highlights for viewers on the progress bar, so that everyone can quickly jump to the part they want to watch. Even before the broadcast, the most exciting and eye-catching clips and the final ending are directly posted online, completely solving people's anxiety about "wanting to know the result quickly", and then they can safely watch the whole process at 2x speed.

But this also brings another disadvantage, which is that the ability to delay gratification will become lower , that is, we may gradually develop from losing the ability to "watch dramas at full speed" to losing the ability to "live at full speed." We will become more inclined to pursue immediate and present happiness , no longer be able to work hard for things in life that have long-term value, and it will be difficult to slow down and appreciate the beautiful things in life.

What’s more serious is that the happiness we can feel in life will become less and less , because life cannot be “speeded up”. We need to patiently wait for those “good moments” to come, but we are used to living at double the speed and have become less and less good at waiting.

The crisis of concentration in the age of information overload

Some TV series are so overloaded that people have to watch them at double speed, which is a common phenomenon. But in fact, even the popular TV series "My Altay", which has only 8 episodes and has received great reviews, has many people watching it at double speed. The commentary on the video platform "Watching a work in X minutes" even has a higher playback volume than the original work, which seems to indicate that the desire to quickly pursue a sense of excitement does not seem to be the only reason for people to watch it at double speed.

Even in real life, many people are living a "double-speed life". For example, many people's travel mode has changed from "leisure" to "check-in". Some people even pursue the special forces-style quick check-in at various popular attractions, instead of slowly appreciating the local scenery and cultural atmosphere.

For example, even if people take time out of their schedule to visit an exhibition at a museum on weekends, few stop to appreciate the details of the exhibition. Most people turn on the "3x speed mode", quickly scan the entire exhibition in ten minutes, and then rush to the next location.

Psychologists have proposed the Information Overload Theory to explain this phenomenon. Information overload refers to the phenomenon that the amount of information a person receives in a certain period of time exceeds his or her processing ability. In today's Internet age, what is least lacking is information and entertainment content.

At work, we use instant messaging software to communicate about work, and workers have to deal with a large number of frequent work messages every day. In life, we become first-line netizens surfing 5G, quickly browsing almost unlimited content on major media platforms, witnessing the rapid changes in society and the endless changes of various Internet celebrities. These constant influx of information into our field of vision, coupled with the instinctive desire of human beings for knowledge, have caused many people to be in a state of information overload.

Modern people are often in a state of information overload without realizing it, which invisibly puts a certain amount of pressure on our psychology, making us more likely to become anxious at work and in life. Many people have had this feeling. When we feel highly anxious, we tend to become less patient and find it difficult to sit down quietly and do something. Even when watching a drama, it is difficult to appreciate and enjoy the process.

At the same time, information overload will also put our cognition in a state of fatigue , which means that it is more difficult for us to concentrate and maintain concentration for a long time. That is why we are impatient to turn on the speed just after clicking on the video, or choose to watch others’ summary of “X minutes to finish watching a work” after watching only two episodes.

In the "speed era", we seem to be trapped in a vicious circle. Because of the scarcity of leisure time, we turn on the speed, which seems to save time, but in fact it aggravates our time anxiety and burnout. We finish watching this drama at 3 times the speed, but there is still the next drama waiting for us. No matter how high the speed is, we can't finish watching the infinite short video content.

But this also highlights the importance of a "mindful mentality". Rather than quickly watching TV dramas and checking in at popular tourist attractions, what is more worthy of our attention is our own experience in these processes . This requires us to appropriately screen and give up those things that are not important to us, and for those things that are really important, we should experience the beauty and fun of life in a comprehensive and profound way at the original speed.

References

[1] Ünal, S. (2018). Are the New Information Environments of the 21st Century Threat or Opportunity? Information Overload and Anxiety in Digital Natives. Journal of Current Researches on Social Sciences, 8(4), 309-342.

[2] Hwang, MY, Hong, JC, Tai, KH, Chen, JT, & Gouldthorp, T. (2020). The relationship between the online social anxiety, perceived information overload and fatigue, and job engagement of civil servant LINE users. Government Information Quarterly, 37(1), 101423.

Planning and production

Author: Chen Yufeng, Master of Developmental and Educational Psychology

Reviewer: Yang Xiaoyang, Associate Professor, School of Psychology, Sichuan Normal University

Planning丨Ding Zong

Editor: Ding Zong

Proofread by Xu Lailinlin