Boredom Begets Speed Consumption, Speed Consumption Begets Boredom: The Feedback Loop of Speed Consumption
(A2025-130393)

AUTHORS

Indeesh Mukhopadhyay, The Ohio State University; Selin Malkoc, Ohio State University; Sam Maglio, University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management - Marketing

ABSTRACT

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, consuming video content at accelerated speeds has become increasingly common. Initially observed among students watching online lectures (Murphy et al. 2022), this behavior has expanded beyond educational contexts to streaming services and podcasts (Sunday Times 2023). For instance, YouTube reported users collectively save over 900 years daily through speed-watching (Youtube 2022). Despite its prevalence, particularly among younger consumers, academic research remains limited, primarily within educational contexts (Chen et al. 2024). Other research has examined media switching due to boredom (Tam & Inzlicht, 2024a) and attentional saturation through media multitasking (Tam & Inzlicht 2024b), but the role of playback speed has been mostly overlooked. We investigate this phenomenon by conceptualizing speed-watching as part of a broader tendency to "speed consume"—experiencing consumption at accelerated speeds. We propose that speed-consumption provides a new way for increasingly bored consumers to seek stimulation. Under-stimulated individuals seek to increase stimulation as they find their optimal stimulation level (Leuba 1955). Stimulation can be achieved diversely, ranging from exploration and risk-taking (Steenkamp and Baumgartner 1992) to variety seeking (Menon and Kahn 1995). We argue that in the contemporary media environment, where media multitasking (Segijn et al. 2017), and switching (Tam & Inzlicht, 2024a) are on the rise, consumers show more boredom with regular speed activities and seek stimulation in speed consumption, which requires greater attentional resources. We further argue that habitual speed consumption creates an unfavorable contrast with regular-speed activities. This, in turn, makes regular-speed activities seem boring, elevating baseline stimulation needs, and thus perpetuating speed consumption – both in the watching and non-watching domains. To examine the presence and extent of speed consumption beyond educational contexts, Study 1 asked 500 MTurk participants (Mage = 36, 57.8% male) about their speed consumption habits across multiple domains (movies, TV, YouTube, social media, podcasts, audiobooks, voiced articles, lectures, sports, and news), as well as their relative preferences between several regular speed, enriched activities (e.g. going to a movie theatre) and a less enriched version that allowed for speed consumption (e.g. streaming the film at home).We found that speed consumption is widespread, with prevalence ranging from 27% (for sports) to 51% (for YouTube). Speed consumption was highest among Generation Z, males, and those with higher education, employment, and income levels. We also found significant cross-modal correlations—speed consumption in any category strongly correlated with consumption in others (r = 0.48-0.71, all p<0.001). Speed consumption tendencies also predicted preferences for less enriched, but potentially faster versions of activities in four of six categories, even after controlling for demographics and individual differences (p<0.001). This preference was driven by participants expecting regular-speed activities to be more boring (p<0.001), rather than less fun (p's = 0.058-0.68), supporting our framework that boredom begets speed consumption. These preliminary findings suggest that speed consumption shifts baseline stimulation needs and drives speed consumption in other domains. Study 2 (N=194) complements these correlational findings with an experimental approach, where participants watched a mockumentary clip at 0.8x, 1x, or 1.5x speed and answered related questions. We found that impatience (p=0.032), negative emotion (p=0.015), and mind wandering (p=0.03) decreased as video speed increased, with these effects more pronounced among habitual speed-watchers, who likely have a lower threshold for boredom. Supporting this, when given the option to watch a future video at higher speeds, frequent speed-watchers strongly preferred 1.5x/2x speeds (p<0.01), while non-speed-watchers (p=0.98) and occasional speed-watchers (p=0.42) did not. These findings suggest that chronic speed-watching distorts the video experience by elevating the baseline rate of attention saturation, making standard-speed experiences feel more boring or time-consuming. Study 3 examined cross-modal spillover directly by asking 355 native English speakers online to evaluate news articles and choose one to read. We used Taskmaster (Permut, Fisher, & Oppenheimer 2019) and Qualtrics' timing tools to track time on/off task and reading duration, while also capturing participants’ chronic speed-watching habits. We found that chronic speed-watchers spent more time off-task (M=63.87 vs. M=33.92 seconds, p=0.01), less time on-task (M=191 vs. M=242.78 seconds, p=0.002), and significantly less time reading (M=135.89 vs. M=176.56 seconds, p=0.004). These findings indicate that speed-watchers strategically allocate attention to avoid boredom associated with normal-speed engagement. Study 4 tested the cross-modal spillover with an experiment. 330 participants watched a 10-minute clip at either 1x or 1.5x speed and reported their impatience. Next, in an ostensibly unrelated study, participants read an article, where we captured reading time. As before, we found that habitual speed-watchers reported greater impatience when viewing at regular (vs. high) speed (p<0.0001). Importantly, impatience during video watching strongly negatively correlated with faster reading time (r=-0.32, p<0.0001), suggesting that speed consumption in one domain (i.e., videos) creates cross-modal spillovers in another (i.e., reading). Further, a 10,000-sample bootstrap analysis using PROCESS Model 4 (Hayes 2012) revealed a significant indirect effect of impatience on reading time: b = 6.04, 95% CI (1.91, 11.53), p=0.0012. Finally, in Study 5, 280 undergraduates were randomized to watch either a short video, a long video, or the same long video at 1.5x speed (matched in length to the short video). Participants then completed the article reading task from Study 3 and reported their speed-watching habits. A 2×3 ANOVA predicting reading time showed a significant main effect of condition (p<0.0001): participants who watched the long, regular-speed video felt more bored and impatient, and consequently spent significantly less time reading (M=42.01 seconds) than those who watched either the short video (M=84.64) or the long video at 1.5x speed (M=83.1). For participants in the 1.5x condition, habitual speed-watchers read for marginally less time than non-speed-watchers (M=78.4 vs. M=106 seconds, p=0.13). These results suggest that while the short video sufficiently engaged all participants' attention, the long video induced boredom for everyone, but especially for chronic speed-watchers. We provide substantial evidence for speed consumption as a generalized phenomenon extending beyond educational contexts. Consumers who speed-consume in one domain tend to do so across multiple domains. Both chronic speed-watching and experimentally induced speed-watching produce similar results, where doing so increases impatience and boredom and subsequently increases speed consumption in an unrelated context.