Short Wave - Feeling Bored? Stop Swiping

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

Have you ever scrolled through a TikTok without finishing it? Switched between YouTube videos halfway through one or the other? Pressed "fast forward" on a Netflix episode that just wasn't holding your interest? That habit is called "digital switching" — and it might be causing the exact thing you're trying to avoid: boredom. Emily and Regina break that and more of the week's news down with the help of All Things Considered's Ailsa Chang.Read this study on digital switching and boredom in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.Interested in hearing more psychology news? Email us at [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Shortwaver's Emily Kwong here, and today I'm joined by two of NPR's finest Elsa Chang. Hi. Hi. And Regina Barber. I'm the finest. You are so foin. Okay.

We all know the drill. We're going to share free science stories in the news that have caught our attention recently. Yes. And I hear you are going to tell me about the connection between boredom and social media. Yeah, we're also going to talk about a contest to tackle the Python problem in the Everglades. And new evidence from an Indian lunar rover about how Earth's moon may have formed.

Super cool. Cannot wait? All of that on this episode of Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. All right, well, let's start with boredom and social media because it's almost a reflex for me now. As soon as I start getting really, really bored, I pull out Instagram.

I have some research to share about that, Elsa. Okay, published this week by the American Psychological Association, it focuses on digital switching. So that is when people swipe through TikTok videos without finishing them. Oh. Yeah. Or skip forward in like a Netflix show if it doesn't hook you right away. Oh, that is me all the time.

And I can spend hours doing that. Yeah. And you're not alone in swiping through videos on your phone. I mean, Katie Tam, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, noticed that she was doce-doying around YouTube too. I realized that I wasn't truly enjoying or engaging with the content. And that makes me wonder. how this behavior actually affects our feelings of boredom.

So to understand how all the skipping impacts boredom, Katie and her colleagues set up seven psychological experiments with over 1,200 total participants. Wow, that's a lot of participants. What did they find? They found that when participants were bored, they voluntarily switched from one video to the next. Which makes sense. I mean, you're bored, so you keep swiping, right? But it sounds like you're about to tell me, while you're doing this not to be bored, you're only boring yourself more? That's right. Oh my God. They thought that switching would help but actually jokes on you switching made the boredom way worse. Like in one experiment, participants could freely switch between seven videos. And in surveys, they found that experience less satisfying, less absorbing, less meaningful than participants who watched a 10-minute video in full.

Most of these participants, by the way, were university students. All right. University students, classic study subjects. Of course. How widely do these findings really apply? Well, Katie and her colleagues did versions of this stuff. with online articles and non-university students, those findings were less conclusive. But the point is attention is powerful. I mean, attention is required to derive satisfaction from the world around us. So Elsa, if you find yourself speeds scrolling through Instagram, Katie has a suggestion. Slow down. Try to focus on the video in front of you and watch it all the way through.

Commit! It's just like how we go to movie theater to watch a movie. This kind of immersive experience actually helps us to enjoy the video more. And we could implement that in our daily life. And it really raises the question what other habits are meant to alleviate an emotion that actually make it worse. That is so interesting.

Okay, well, let's move on from how boring I am making my own life to snakes because they are scary and not boring. And maybe I do need more snakes in my boring life to make it less boring. What is the deal with these invasive snakes? All right, Elsa. Our story begins in the 80s.

With the trade of Burmese pythons as exotic pets, Yeah, like Burmese pythons being these large constrictor, like snake species, they're not venomous. Right, right. They like squeeze their prey to death. Yes. And these snakes are native to Southeast Asia, and they've become a problem here in the States. So specifically in the Everglades and South Florida, where they were first released decades ago into the wild, now wildlife biologists estimate there are tens of thousands of them roaming around. And the longest one they found was 19 feet long.

Oh, my God. And it was way longer than any snake native to Florida. These Burmese pythons, also, they compete with native predators, and they've proven really disruptive to the local ecosystem. Here's what Michaela Spencer told us. She works for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. They're causing a lot of negative impacts. Direct, easiest one to measure is that they are eating our native wildlife. So they're eating mammals, native birds, even some of our native reptiles, like federally threatened and endangered species. Gulp. Oh, God.

Just like that. Yeah. All over floor. So because of these negative impacts for over a decade, Florida officials have been running a contest. Wait, like a contest for snake hunters or something? Yeah, it's called the Florida Python Challenge. And it kicked off right after midnight, August 9th. There were two divisions, novice and professional.

And there's a mandatory training that like all participants have to pass. So they actually know how to identify and humanely kill the Burmese pythons without hurting any like native snakes. I'm worried about the people in the novice cat. still. Yeah, but you know, they're in it for the cash prize, right? Yeah, there are cash prizes. Suddenly a game show. Makes it worth it. And there is a grand prize of $10,000 for the participant who catches the most pythons during the contest. And we're talking like hundreds of hunters, like prowling through the Everglades for 10 days in teams of two or more. And they use snake hooks, air guns, bolt guns, and hammers to really like take out these giant snakes.

Bolt guns. Wow. Okay. So were they successful? Like, did they fix the python problem? Yeah. Sadly, Elsa, uh, no. They're still tabulating the results, but like, just to give you like a sense, last year they got rid of 209 pythons, which is a lot less than like the tens of thousands estimated to live there. Well, from there, we're going to go to the moon as we do, you know. Yes. I hear you have some news from the Indian Lunar Rover. Yeah. So this is the Pragyan rover from India's Chandrayan three mission that landed on the almost a year ago. And Pragyana has sent back data with more evidence for this huge magma ocean hypothesis. Oh, that's so great because I've been totally wondering about the huge magma ocean

hypothesis. What the heck is that? Well, you should because the moon controls the tides. You know, this is relevant. This is a hypothesis for how our moon formed. The idea is that, picture this also, around 4.5 billion years ago, something the size of Mars smashed into Proto Earth. That's like when our planet was still forming. Yeah, like, the debris created by this impact flew into space and eventually became the Earth's moon. And at the time, the material was really hot and molten. Yeah, so imagine like seas of lava, like covering the moon's surface as it's forming. And if this actually happened, there would be evidence of that in the rock and dust on the moon, like traces of certain minerals that the magma ocean left behind, right?

So scientists have actually seen this evidence. in dust and rocks brought back by the Apollo missions in the 70s. Wait, wait, so there was already evidence out there for the huge magma ocean hypothesis. So wait, how does this rover fit into that? All right. This little rover, Pragyan, used x-rays to analyze lunar soil and found the same trace evidence of the magma ocean, which was a big deal because the Apollo missions back in the 70s really only went to the equatorial part of the moon. Yeah, and this rover went near the moon's south pole and still found the same evidence on a

totally different part of the moon. And the researchers detailed all of this in the journal Nature this week. This area of the moon has been study from space, like using orbiters, but this was the first time a spacecraft had landed there and done on-ground analysis. So I talked to the lead author of the study, Santos Vadovali. He said he's already looking forward to future missions that will bring some moon soil back to Earth for further study. I mean, I'm with him. I love moon dirt. I want more of it. Right. I mean, I literally love moons too. I love moon soil, all of it. And I know I say this all the time, but it's still true. Thank you so much for coming, Elsa. Oh my God. You're so amazing. No, you're amazing. So true. And in a time of breaking

news that makes my head spin, I can really count on you, Elsa, and your work on NPR's consider this. That's the afternoon podcast about what the news means for you. Before we head out, a reminder that shortwave plus allows you to enjoy our show without sponsor interruptions. And it helps support our work. Find out more at plus.npr.org slash shortwave. This episode was produced by Tyler Bartlam and Hannah Chin. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and Christopher Intaliata. Emily, Hannah, Rebecca, and I check the facts. And the audio engineer was co-Takasugi Chernovin.

I'm Regina Barber. And I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.