flâneur

No flipping - by Rob Horning - Internal exile

robhorning.substack.com · 1,067 words · saved by 1 readers

The Guardian recently reported on this paper by psychologists Katy Y.Y. Tam and Michael Inzlicht that claims that “switching behavior on digital media makes people more bored.” Boredom is unpleasant, with people going to great lengths to avoid it. One way to escape boredom and increase stimulation is to consume digital media, for example watching short videos on YouTube or TikTok. One common way that people watch these videos is to switch between videos and fast-forward through them, a form of viewing we call digital switching. Here, we hypothesize that people consume media this way to avoid boredom, but this behavior paradoxically intensifies boredom. So in other words, channel flipping and other kinds of distracted viewing don’t address boredom but express it. Scrolling and clicking is a way to tell yourself you are bored. (It seems strange that research would be necessary to establish this. Who thinks you can doomscroll your way to engagement?) Another implication of this claim is t

The Guardian recently reported on this paper by psychologists Katy Y.Y. Tam and Michael Inzlicht that claims that “switching behavior on digital media makes people more bored.” Boredom is unpleasant, with people going to great lengths to avoid it. One way to escape boredom and increase stimulation is to consume digital media, for example watching short videos on YouTube or TikTok. One common way that people watch these videos is to switch between videos and fast-forward through them, a form of viewing we call digital switching. Here, we hypothesize that people consume media this way to…

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