When was the last time you were bored? Not waiting-in-line bored. Power's out. Phone's dead. Nothing in the house works. That kind of bored.
I can't remember mine either. You have to work to get there now.
Sit thirty minutes with a friend. You might laugh twice. Most of it is listening. The rest is waiting your turn. It moves at the speed of talking.
Give Reels the same thirty minutes. You laugh every few swipes. A bad one is gone in a second. It moves at the speed of your thumb.
Guess which one feels boring now.
Researchers at the University of Toronto ran experiments on 1,223 people. One group got a single ten minute video. No skipping. The other got seven videos and could skip the second they got bored.
Which group had a better time?
You'd bet on the skippers, right? They never had to watch a boring minute.
Wrong. The skippers were more bored. They enjoyed it less. It meant less to them.
Same result when they picked the videos themselves. It wasn't the videos. It was the skipping.
Now picture that blackout. No phone. Twenty minutes in. You'll read anything. Ingredients on a shampoo bottle. The back of a cereal box. You've become the "one-video group." And the book gathering dust in the corner gets interesting. Finally.
What happened in your brain? Did it heal? No. Did the book get better? No.
It just stopped losing to your phone.
Swipe, you laugh. Swipe again? You laugh again. It never runs out.
Everything else has to beat that. A walk. A two-hour movie. A friend telling you about their weekend.
Your life has no swipe. It never did. Now it competes with something that does.