Study reveals how watching videos at double speed reworks brain

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The digital age isn’t slowing down and neither are its participants.

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For many who watch videos on the internet — such as TikTok or YouTube — speed-watching has become a thing. It’s an increasingly common way for many to consume content since it enables the assimilation of information in half the time or more than watching a video at regular speed.

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But what about the effect it might be having on your brain? An international team of researchers set out to determine that.

Per the New York Post, 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 1.25, two and 2.5 times the normal speed.

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Afterward, both groups were asked to complete tests that assessed how well they retained the content of the videos.

While not much of a difference was recorded at 1.25 times the normal speed, memory retention took a hit at two times and beyond.

“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.”

He 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.

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Sticking to 1.25 or 1.5 times the speed is advised, especially for unfamiliar and complex content.

The journal Educational Psychology Review recently published the findings.

The way we consume content today also affects many age ranges — not just kids.

Adults aged 61 to 94 were more impacted by the faster speeds than those 18 to 36 years old.

A study in 2023 found that older adults see a 31% drop in understanding at just 1.5 times the speed, compared to younger peers who maintain more than 90% comprehension at two times.

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