To Sit Quietly in a Room Alone

Reflections on smartphone usage, media consumption, and a new study that shows how switching between video clips intensifies boredom.

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

― Blaise Pascal 

Before on-demand streaming, entertainment followed a set schedule. New episodes of a show aired at a certain time of the week, and it drew together friends and families in front of the television. 

Media consumption was often a social experience; people watched things together and had a shared experience they could bond over afterwards. In comparison, scrolling on a smartphone is anti-social - it's geared towards individual consumption. Seldomly, do we watch the same things in the same time and space.  

TikTok and the short-form video format in general remind me of “channel surfing” or “zapping” as it was known during the golden era of flow TV. Back then, it was typical to restlessly change channels in search of something interesting to watch. That is more or less what young people are doing constantly on TikTok, except there are limitless channels and no option to stay on the channels for long. As with channel surfing, the point of scrolling TikTok is not to be deeply engaged with anything but to unwind and distract the hyperactive brain momentarily.  

Watching an endless stream of short video clips is now a favored pass-time activity for many. TikTok’s video feeds have been copied by YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Netflix, Spotify, and even LinkedIn.  But contrary to what one might think, scrolling through short video clips does not actually relieve viewers of boredom. Paradoxically, switching from video to video in an infinite scrolling loop intensifies boredom. 

That was the main finding of a study that was published last month in Journal of Experimental Psychology General (American Psychological Association) by Katy Y. Y. Tam from University of Toronto Scarborough and Michael Inzlicht from University of Toronto.