“I accelerate the speed of audio playback on platforms like WhatsApp or Telegram.
Also in certain YouTube video tutorials.
I use it to get immediate answers, especially if it is for work issues, so as not to waste time.”
The speaker is Diego Ferraz, 28 years old and creator of informative content about the climate crisis.
Like many other social media users, when he finds himself without time to listen to an entire audio or a complete video, he selects the option to speed it up on his mobile screen.
Do you know all the information?
“At 1.5x it's easy, but at 1.75x or double the speed I often have to go back,” he admits.
This tendency to see – and now also hear – everything faster is defined by the term
speedwatching
, and it is increasingly common to see it on all types of platforms, from instant messaging to Netflix, TikTok or Spotify.
Its use, neurologists warn, can affect short-term memory, although studies on its possible long-term effects are lacking.
Videos can be accelerated on YouTube since 2010, but the real change came when WhatsApp, the most downloaded messaging platform in the world—95% of Spaniards use it—in 2021 incorporated this possibility for playing its audios.
Now on social networks like TikTok it is also possible to increase the playback speed.
And it goes further: Netflix or Amazon Prime allow you to watch your audiovisual works at different speeds.
According to Neal Mohan, YouTube's chief product officer in 2022, its users saved “an average of more than 900 years of video time per day by watching faster speeds.”
And most surprisingly, he noted, they had even received requests to add three or four times normal playback speeds.
Daniel Pazó, 27 years old, admits to using this tool for certain academic courses, interviews or tutorials.
“If the content is very long and I want to see something specific, that possibility helps me not to swallow an entire video,” he argues.
“It would help a lot in cases like the typical teacher who only reads PowerPoint.”
The data supports this: according to a 2021 study by the University of California (USA), 85% of students accelerated the recorded lessons.
Short-term memory problems
But what could be the consequences of resorting to this accelerated form of content consumption?
According to scientists, it is still too early to determine exactly.
For Diego Redolar, professor of Neuroscience and Vice Dean of Research at the Faculty of Psychology at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, there are risks and benefits.
“When we listen to a faster message, we shorten the listening time, but we lose many of the aspects linked to the message itself.
In this line, prosody stands out, which is the emotional way in which we interpret said message: pauses, voice inflections, tone, etc.
Each video or audio has a specific complexity that makes it unique.
"Not to mention a cultural work, like a film, which is designed with its silences," the professor emphasizes, "it is processed by the brain's amygdala and is very difficult to perceive if we speed up."
Increasing the playback speed of content can also serve to make the content adapt to your personal organization of the day.
“If I have 30 minutes to eat and I want to watch a 40-minute video, I put it at 1.5 times the speed so that I have time to watch it,” says Roberto Estévez, 26 years old and a recent graduate in sociology.
He admits that he watches documentaries on YouTube and even podcasts at a faster rate, but that he doesn't end up paying them the attention he would like.
“I feel like I don't know everything, but normally it's empty content, so I don't care a little.
If something interests me a lot, I turn it back and play it at normal speed,” he says.
In this process of receiving the accelerated message, the brain tries to accommodate itself as best it can.
“It adapts to the information due to the global context of the message.
The prefrontal cortex works there, which is even positive to enhance,” details Redolar.
However, the way language works is changing.
“Instead of focusing on the analytical part and capturing the detail of the content, we focus on the global, based on a context.
We understand the general thing, but the detail is lost,” explains the neurologist.
“When I watch an interview at fast speed, I still want to learn more about the continent and not so much about the specific content,” Daniel Pazó acknowledges in this sense.
In fact, when the audio is rewinded it is because the prefrontal cortex cannot cope, as detailed and supported by a recent study by the American Psychological Association (APA),
Advantages and costs of watching videoconferences at high speed
, which concludes that these acts impair understanding of the content.
less concentration
“It is said that the cortex is hijacked trying to understand the context,” explains Reddolar.
And although in adults it does not affect long-term memory, nor is there still evidence that it generates changes in the brain, it does affect memory about the content itself, short-term memory: “If during the process The information is not taken well, it is not consolidated in our memory as such.”
And the faster the speed, the greater the difficulty of capturing the message and its details.
To listen to faster audio, you have to concentrate more.
All of this results in an increasing tendency towards a capacity for intense concentration, but shorter in time, according to the various sources consulted.
“It can accustom us to a rate of presentation of stimuli that is faster than reality, which could cause problems in tolerating slower rates and deeper processing,” says Jacobo Albert, professor of Neuropsychology at the Autonomous University of Madrid ( UAM) and member of Neuromottiva, a center specialized in neuropsychological evaluation and treatment
In a developing brain—up to the age of 25—there are risks.
Although there are already studies that warn that the use of WhatsApp can damage the memory of younger people, Redolar warns that at that time "it is still very plastic based on the interaction with the environment."
“We are seeing that the use of new technologies at learning ages modifies certain patterns.
Specifically, viewing content at high speed can hinder the analytical processes for acquiring the message," he details and warns of the risks in the neural networks of young people's attention, "which can be modified if a child becomes accustomed to have the information in a faster way.”
In any case, he points out, there is still a lack of studies in this regard.
Faster messages for a fleeting society
Videos, audios and podcasts played at faster speeds do nothing more than respond to the rhythms of a fast-paced society, according to Elisa Brey, professor of Sociology and Political Communication at the Faculty of Information Sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid.
“We live in a society that wants to get rid of time and what it means to have limited time,” she points out, adding: “The Internet has allowed an explosion of available content, in a kind of spiral of consumption and production without a final limit. .
To consume all the content that is possible, what we do is watch it at full speed, as a way of cheating time, but we find ourselves trapped in a loop disconnected from the content that we see at an accelerated rate.”
“If they send me a three-minute audio, I will put it at 2x speed, because I have to spend three minutes with an open conversation with things that are not so important,” Pazó argues in this sense.
However, Estévez does not see it as being so useful: “I don't think listening to audio faster gives me any advantage.
You save some time, but it even becomes ridiculous, like: 'Phew, a 6-minute audio.'
But then we spent an hour watching reels and TikTok.
It's a little pointless, but I think we all do it."
Is it, then, a technological advance?
"Not for me.
It is one more option that adapts to certain needs,” says Estévez.
“It depends on what it is used for.
In entertainment or leisure, I think it makes no sense.
The purpose is to enjoy, not so much to watch and collect videos,” responds Ferraz.
“We are overstimulating the mind to the point that it is difficult for us to pay attention to anything for an hour.
That is negative,” Pazó reflects on the use of these tools.
“We have to live with a little more pause.
Nor will our lives go away in 10 more minutes,” she concludes.
“The true luxury is to give ourselves time, take breaks, set a limit, say no, accept that we cannot do everything, even though it may generate frustration in the short term,” concludes sociologist Brey.