It seems like the easiest way to quickly entertain yourself. But research shows an unexpected effect.

Psychologists from the University of Toronto found: when a person is bored, constantly switching between short videos doesn't reduce boredom, but on the contrary, can intensify it. Experiment participants felt less engaged and got less enjoyment from watching than those who calmly watched one video to the end.

Why does this happen?

When we're bored, the brain starts looking for a stronger stimulus. It seems that the next clip will be more interesting than the previous one. But each new switch only fragments attention further. As a result, we consume more and more content but feel less and less satisfaction.

These processes lead to long-term effects.

Every time we switch between short stimuli, we train the brain to work in that mode—fragmentarily, in anticipation of constant picture changes.

And the more often this happens, the harder it becomes to switch to the opposite mode: holding attention on one task, reading long text, thinking deeply about a problem without the urge to immediately get distracted.

It becomes a vicious cycle: bored—scroll reels—attention fragments—deep immersion gets harder—we get bored faster. You can break it at only one point: at the moment when your hand is already reaching for the phone, but the decision hasn't been made yet.