The fast and the curious?
If you’re a big fan of watching videos on the internet — like via TikTok, YouTube or Masterclass — chances are you’ve grown accustomed to listening to people speak at Looney Tunes speed.
Speed-watching has become an increasingly common way to consume content since it enables the assimilation of information in half the time or more.
But have you ever wondered about the effect that it’s having on your brain? An international team of researchers set out to determine just that.
The group examined 24 studies that generally involved placing participants into two groups — one in which they listened to a video at normal speed and another in which the same video was presented at 1.25x, 1.5x, 2x and 2.5x normal speed.
Afterwards, both groups were asked to complete tests that assessed how well they retained the video’s content.
While not much of a difference was recorded at 1.5x, memory retention definitely took a hit at 2x and above.
“Incoming information is stored temporarily in a memory system called working memory,” Marcus Pearce, who researches cognitive science at Queen Mary University of London, wrote this week in The Conversation about the study.
“This allows chunks of information to be transformed, combined and manipulated into a form that is ready for transfer to the long-term memory.”
Pearce notes that working memory can only process a certain amount of information at a time — too much at once can lead to cognitive overload and loss of information.
The scientific takeaway is to stick to 1.25x or 1.5x speed, especially for unfamiliar, complex content.
The findings were recently published in the journal Educational Psychology Review.
It’s tempting to think that the way we consume content today only affects young, developing minds — but this research suggests otherwise.
Adults aged 61 to 94 were more impacted by the faster speeds than those 18 to 36 years old.
A 2023 study found that older adults see a 31 % drop in understanding at just 1.5x speed, compared to younger peers who maintain over 90 % comprehension at 2x.
What’s unclear, at this point, is whether the issue is age or practice — meaning, are younger adults better at consuming content at faster speeds because their minds are more pliable or is it simply because they’ve trained their brains by doing it more often?
If it’s the latter, can older adults improve?
The limited research we have indicates that, sadly, the answer is not so much.
Younger brains are simply more adaptable, although studies do suggest that older adults can train to get better, even if they often require more time and likely hit a plateau sooner.
If older adults want to rewire their brains for speed-watching, a deliberate program of gradual speed training, retention checks and cognitive boosting is the most promising route.
The good news is that experts say that consuming content at normal speed actually makes it more enjoyable for everyone.
