By: Maria Eduarda Macieira (Grade 5)

Have you ever felt lazy about listening to audio? Nowadays, we have “solutions” for that. That little button on the side of the audio written “1.0 x”, “1.5 x” or “2.0 x” was created in 2021 and it accelerates the audio to the speed you want. But is that safe and healthy?

We live in a society where we are pressured to be faster. And we don’t even notice it. Our daily routine, our activities, the news spreading so fast, communication evolving all the time and things happening all the time, it all impacts our health. In the past, people went to the cafe, sat, ate calmly, read the newspaper, enjoyed the view, talked… nowadays, we have lots of information all around us all the time. There are phone notifications, ads and media everywhere and time feels faster.

On Netflix, Youtube, Disney+, for example, give the possibility to advance the video the times we want and on WhatsApp, there is the tool of accelerating audios. And it’s absurd because people are speeding up their own hobbies! When we watch something we like, we relax our brain. But when this function of acceleration is used, it’s different, because your brain understands it as a reward system. 

That can cause cognitive overload, lapses of memory loss, loss of patience, distorted comprehension and anxiety, transforming into a cycle. It’s very serious because if we stop to think about it, we are harming the way we communicate with others! The “Speed-watching” is related to the fear of missing out (FOMO).

A study done in California revealed that 89% of the students accelerate online classes and 10% of Spanish podcast listeners do that too, and this action is known as “speed-watching”. When people do that, they lose important information and details. Neuroscientists also believe that the speed of consumption can be associated with a high speed in the human brain.

It’s essential to research, listen to specialists and pay attention to these small daily actions that can harm our mental health and live in the moment.

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