In a Sped-Up World, It’s Becoming a Luxury To Slow Down
Who actually has time to be a human anymore?
I recently came across a YouTube shopping haul from circa 2010, reuploaded on its hyperactive younger sibling, TikTok. One of the most liked comments on the clip was, ‘I can’t believe we used to think these videos were fast-paced.’
The video is actually relatively fast-paced, but, of course, if you compare it to the 15-second day-in-the-life TikToks or those even shorter clips that string together a rapid-fire sequence of images — each one barely lingering long enough for you to process what’s there — it might seem slow.
The average video length on TikTok today is between 35–55 seconds. Just a few years ago, in 2017, the average YouTube video was around 15 minutes long. Today, it’s a little over 11 minutes. YouTube now even has a dedicated section for videos up to one minute long called YouTube Shorts.
It does seem like everything has sped up recently, doesn’t it? There are countless apps and websites that distil entire books into bite-sized reads you can consume in a matter of minutes. There’s a whole genre of sped-up versions of popular songs that social media and Spotify are now full of. Even TV shows, ads and movie scenes are becoming shorter. Couple all that with ultra-fast fashion brands…
