Watching Movies at Speed? This Is What Happens to Your Brain

Fast-paced audiovisual content is the bread and butter of younger generations. To avoid wasting valuable time, they scan the entire material with their senses, capturing only the most important aspects (in their opinion). In studies conducted, for example, at a California university, as many as 89% of students admitted to watching lectures at a fast pace. Why do they do this?

According to those who use "acceleration," the fast pace allows for efficient reading and even replaying of the material to retain more details. Furthermore, concise and condensed content can be more memorable. Furthermore, if the material is paced rather quickly and the words are "close together," the person replaying it must pay close attention to ensure nothing is missed and to understand everything. This is a great way to improve concentration and free oneself from distractions.

Can the human brain “keep up” at this pace?

According to experts, not necessarily. First and foremost, the human brain needs time to absorb information, recognize words, categorize them appropriately, and only then remember them and be able to return to them. When everything happens at a very fast pace, the brain can actually "rebel," omitting certain information, not categorizing words appropriately, and therefore, worst of all... not remembering!

During classic, natural speech, people typically speak at a rate of 150 words per minute. If we double or triple the speed, the speech itself will still be understandable to the recipient, but what they will gain from it is debatable. All new information first enters working memory, which needs time to process it and then "sends" it to long-term memory. If working memory becomes overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, it may begin to selectively process information, leading to loss of some of it.

Scientists have examined the rate of information acquisition

Experts decided to conduct a meta-analysis to determine whether the speed of information delivery can actually affect retention. The results were published in Educational Psychology Review in April 2025. In the study, conducted by Theepan Tharumalingam, Brady R. T. Roberts, Jonathan M. Fawcett, and Evan F. Risko, two groups of people were created. One group watched the video at a natural pace, the other at a sped-up pace. Both groups were required to complete a test regarding the content presented in the video at the end. The results of this study were clear. The group that watched the video at a natural pace performed best. Furthermore, the faster the pace of the content (1.25x, 1.5x, 2x, 2.5x), the worse the results. The experts found that a 1.5x speedup resulted in a 2-point drop in scores, while an even faster 2.5x speed lowered scores by as much as 17 percentage points.

The study also examined older adults aged 61-94, whose results were even worse than those of younger individuals. Furthermore, scientists believe that older adults should absorb information at a natural pace, even if it's slower, to better retain it. This only demonstrates how working memory functions, which requires more time to adapt to content with age.

Can a fast pace be harmful?

As experts emphasize, there are no conclusive research results yet to support this thesis. However, it's already clear that constantly overloading the brain with information negatively impacts its performance. Watching content at a fast pace certainly saves time and allows for even more insight.

A slight acceleration, as the study showed, doesn't pose a significant burden on the body, but it's unclear what the long-term effects might be if the pace is significantly faster and the brain is constantly subjected to it. Will this be a form of training for the brain, or perhaps an attempt to adapt to a new reality? We await further research.