We’ve all been there — procrastinating important tasks, stuck in a queue or even just waiting to fall asleep. You pull out your phone, open TikTok or YouTube, and start scrolling through videos, hoping to find something interesting to pass the time. But, as it turns out, this might be making things worse. According to a new study published by the American Psychological Association, endlessly scrolling through videos doesn’t just fail to relieve boredom —  it actually makes you even more bored!

Yes, you heard that right. That endless swiping and skipping through videos isn’t helping; it’s hurting. Dr. Katy Tam from the University of Toronto Scarborough, the lead author of the study, explains it quite simply: “We feel bored when there’s a gap between how engaged we are and how engaged we want to be,” she said. “When people keep switching through videos, they become less engaged with the videos and they are looking for something more interesting. This can lead to increased feelings of boredom.”

Basically, the more you swipe, the more you dig yourself into a pit of boredom. Tam and her team carried out seven experiments with over 1,200 participants to see how digital “channel surfing” affects our brains. Spoiler alert: it’s not good. One of the experiments revealed that people felt more bored when allowed to skip around within a video compared to when they were forced to watch it from start to finish.

This is ironic, considering most of us think switching to the next video is the key to escaping the restlessness. But no, instead of finding the next viral gem, you’re just setting yourself up for more tedium. According to Dr. Tam, “Our research shows that while people fast-forward or skip videos to avoid boredom, this behaviour can actually make them feel more bored.”

Now, I know what you’re thinking. This can’t be true for everyone, right? Maybe younger people or older people handle boredom differently. Well, Tam’s team did find that age and digital habits might play a role in how boredom is experienced. In their later experiments, which included participants of a broader age range, the results were less clear-cut. Older participants didn’t always feel more bored when given the option to skip through videos. Tam suggests that “how people consume videos and how this affects boredom may vary based on age and digital media habits, but further research is needed to explore this.”

So, what’s the takeaway here? Next time you’re tempted to scroll through TikTok, maybe pause and actually watch a video in full. It might be more satisfying than you think. Tam puts it best: “Just as we pay for an immersive experience in a movie theatre, enjoyment often comes from immersing ourselves in videos rather than swiping through them.”

So, next time you’re bored, maybe resist the urge to swipe and avoid the dreaded doom-scroll. You just might find that the cure for your boredom is right there in front of you, you just need to give it a chance.