Abstract
Many of us know people—whether friends, neighbors, or co-workers—who seem to constantly have an earbud in. Walking down the street, shopping for groceries, or sitting on the bus, they are always consuming some sort of media. Whether listening to audiobooks or podcasts or watching videos on their phones, they are increasingly doing so at faster speeds to keep pace with an endless stream of information.
Speed watching or speed listening to media is a relatively new trend; adjusting playback speed has not always been such an accessible option. However, most popular media apps now have speed modification built-in to their product’s design, many with a filter that corrects the distorted pitch that once accompanied traditional playback acceleration.
Both Apple and Spotify currently offer users the option to zip through podcasts, 1 and Audible’s listeners can do the same with audiobooks, a new take on “speed reading.” These days most online newspapers and magazines also provide audio versions of articles, available at various playback speeds, of course. Even video streaming services have followed suit: Netflix offers multiple playback speeds for shows and movies, and YouTube recently debuted a 4x option for premium subscribers, apparently based on user demand.
This need for speed makes sense when it comes to content like textbooks and lectures. Students have long looked for shortcuts to complete assignments (e.g., CliffsNotes), so the idea that strategies for speeding through digital coursework would be attractive to today’s busy student is unsurprising. In one recent survey of students in California, 89% admitted to having changed the playback speed of online lectures. 2
At the same time, it can seem counterintuitive to rush through content meant for enjoyment, but the numbers reveal that we are starting to do that too. Polling by The Economist and YouGov found that 31% of young Americans listen to audio at playback speeds faster than 1x, 1 and around 5% of Audible users have tried listening to audiobooks at 1.5x speed or faster. 3 Even more have experimented with bumping up their listening slightly.
This Is Your Brain at High Speed
What happens to the brain when listening and viewing habits are accelerated? When the human brain is exposed to information, that information passes through three phases of memory: encoding, storage, and retrieval. 2 The encoding phase is when the brain processes and comprehends speech, and this takes some time. The average person speaks at a rate of about 150 words per minute, and though most people can process language more quickly, doubling or even tripling that rate can reduce the quality and longevity of the memories.
In the brain, incoming information is stored temporarily in working memory, where pieces of data are parsed and combined into a form that is ready for transfer to the long-term memory, or storage. 2 Because working memory has limited capacity, if too much information arrives too quickly, it can be overwhelmed, leading to cognitive overload.
One underexamined consequence of accelerated media consumption is the systematic elimination of natural pauses in speech. Spoken language is not continuous; it is intentionally punctuated by hesitations, breaths, and brief silences that signal emphasis, allow reflection, and support transitions between ideas. These pauses provide the listener’s brain with momentary windows to encode information, regulate cognitive load, and integrate meaning. When audio or video is sped up, these temporal cues are compressed or erased entirely.
Emerging evidence suggests that this loss of cognitive “breathing room” carries measurable costs. Without pauses, information arrives in an uninterrupted stream that can overwhelm working memory, particularly at playback speeds exceeding 1.5×. Listeners may retain the gist of content, but processing becomes shallower, with reduced sensitivity to emotional nuance, social context, and prosodic cues embedded in rhythm and intonation. Memory formation may also suffer, especially for complex or unfamiliar material, as the absence of pauses interferes with consolidation. Older adults appear particularly vulnerable to these effects, while younger listeners may compensate more effectively—but not without subtle trade-offs in long-term retention and mental fatigue. 4
Yet, data on the nascent trend are optimistic. In a study 5 focused specifically on medical students watching online lectures, there was no significant difference in student concentration or long-term memory retention for lecture playback speeds up to 2x, indicating that students actually can watch medical school lectures at their preferred speed, within reason, without worry.
Other research on students outside of the medical field found that participants watching lectures at faster speeds, including up to 2x, performed just as well on both immediate tests and those administered a week later as participants watching at normal speeds. 6 Notably, a recent meta-analysis looked at 24 studies on participants who were learning information through watching lectures at various speeds. 7 The results demonstrated that increasing the playback speed of lectures often has very little effect on outcomes for speeds of 1.5x and slower, though negative effects increased noticeably as playback speeds approached or exceeded 2x. In other words, overall, increasing watch speed up to a threshold of 2x is typically harmless in academic settings and may help overworked students complete assignments they would not be able to otherwise.
These time-saving benefits can extend beyond the classroom as well, potentially helping people reduce work hours by condensing trainings and even improving enjoyment of this newfound leisure time by compressing the time it takes to complete the books, shows, and movies that are of interest to them. According to YouTube estimates, viewers collectively save more than 900 years per day thanks to its fast-playback features. 1
Fast-Forwarding the Mind: What Happens When We Speed Things Up
If this is all sounding slightly dystopian, like the optimization of consumption heralding the destruction of our attention spans, there are some benefits to speeding up content. In addition to saving time, research has shown that faster speeds seem to reduce mind-wandering, allowing users to focus more fully, potentially contributing to increased comprehension and memory. 8
Furthermore, just like closed captions and alt text, playback speed modification increases accessibility. Because increasing playback speed can help prevent mind wandering, in practice some people with specific conditions (e.g., ADHD) find that speed-watching and listening is more pleasant and less of a struggle than consuming normally paced content. 9
On the contrary, there are a few concerns. Increasing playback speed beyond 2x, especially when it comes to academic content, can indeed reduce comprehension and quality of learning. 6 Going too fast degrades the absorption of information, and because this happens at different rates for each user, individuals will need to experiment to find the limits of playback speed that work best for them.
There is also currently very little research on the long-term effects of speedy playback on mental function and brain activity. It is possible that these effects may be positive, improving the brain’s ability to manage cognitive load. 8 Or they could be negative, including greater mental fatigue and reduced tolerance for longer periods of focus. This is an area for future study.
On a similar note, though research on this growing trend is still scarce, age is already coming to the fore as an important variable for speed consumption. More young people are taking part in speed-consuming behaviors. They want audiobooks, podcasts, and videos to go faster so they can consume more content in a shorter amount of time. This is not that younger people inherently have shorter attention spans or that they are impatient or unintelligent. Rather, they have had access to so much more media at an earlier age than those of previous generations. They have simply had more practice managing the constant stream of data and can do so more efficiently.
Older adults, on the contrary, are already playing catch-up in the tech world, so speeding up content can be more detrimental. That is not to say it cannot or should not be attempted. Despite the pervasive stereotype that members of older generations are resistant to technology, in 2021 three out of four older adults reported using technology for social reasons, and three out of 10 reported using technology to pursue a passion or interest. 8 The ability to condense this online learning through rapid playback could benefit older adults just as much as it does students.
In contrast to college-aged students; however, research indicates older adults’ test performance is generally impaired when watching or listening to content at faster speeds. 8 Older adults, even those with normal hearing, often express having difficulty following rapid-fire conversations, which might be explained by age-related impairments in processing speed. Or, it could just be the fact that older adults lack experience with faster playback and speech rates, meaning this is a deficit that practice could improve. This is another important area for future research.
The Art of Picking Up the Pace
Taking into account the benefits and drawbacks of speeding up consumption, there are some best practices that can make the transition to higher speeds easier and more effective. First, it is important to ease in to speed. Instead of starting by doubling the pace of content, which will sound like gibberish to people accustomed to normal speech, try bumping up the speed bit by bit.
Begin by nudging audio and visual content to 1.25x, then when the brain has acclimated to smoothing over any small skips and blips, increase to 1.5x, etc. With this method, some users can become comfortable with 3x or even 4.5x speed. 3 Though these extreme users are outliers, it is not hard to imagine that most people could become used to consuming media in double time, meaning that they could “read” a book in half the time or binge a season of a favorite show in just one evening. Goodbye to marathon couch sessions.
Another aspect of speeding up content is considering the type of media. Most people do not speed listen or watch everything. Instead, users tend to toggle between speeds. On Audible, for example, less than 1% of listeners are exclusively speed listeners. 3 Speed choice varies based on the purpose for which each individual is consuming that particular media. For example, for content that is not dialogue heavy (like a football game), or for a person who just wants to scan the news each morning before work, significantly increasing playback speed can make a lot of sense. At the very least it wouldn’t hurt for the viewer to miss a detail or two.
There is also evidence that one can get better results from speed listening and watching when the content covers a familiar topic. 10 When listeners are familiar with the subject, they can maintain a high level of comprehension at high speeds without excessively taxing the brain. Therefore, if one is already familiar with what the video or audio passage covers, it will be easier to increase playback speed without losing information.
Conversely, if someone is trying to relax their brain and wind down before bed or is watching a movie to appreciate pacing and cinematography, bumping up the speed would ruin the experience. When efficiency removes pause, it also removes space—for reflection, emotion, and meaning. There is a time and a place for speed consumption, and it can be a distinctly personal preference.
Finally, insights from cognitive psychology suggest that it is important to reflect on all content that a person consumes. 3 Our brains are not tape recorders, and it takes time to process new information and store it. The brain makes sense of new input by connecting it to previous experience. Thus, if we want to remember what we consume at any speed, we need to be actively making those observations and connections. This can be difficult to do with sped up playback, as our brains are at capacity just making sense of the words. Taking a moment afterward to ensure we have made proper connections may go a long way toward making speed consumption valuable.
While speed consumption has the potential to maximize efficiency and help us adapt to a media-rich world, it comes with distinct challenges and requires thoughtful consideration. Both younger and older generations have the potential to benefit from faster playback, provided it is approached gradually and with personal needs in mind. Ultimately, striking a balance between speed and comprehension, and taking time to reflect on new information, will go a long way toward ensuring that rapid media consumption helps, rather than hinders, our media experiences.