Life in 2x speed: Ohio State community navigates student homework hacks and trends

Natalie Zurakowski
Thu, 04 Jun 2026 11:11:06 +0000
Arts & Life, Instagram Page, News, ADHD, Attention Spans, boredom, college, Distractions, learning, lectures, Long-term memory, memory, Memory Consolidation, Multitasking, ohio state, pop culture, psychiatry, screen time, Short-term memory, studying, TAKE 5, tiktok

Study spots can be found in every corner and building on Ohio State’s large campus. Credit: Casey Cascaldo | Lantern File Photo.

With one click, Payton Puryear, a third-year neuroscience student, turns her hour-long anatomy lecture into a 30-minute video.?

Between TikTok videos, lecture recordings and YouTube videos, watching content at faster speeds has become second nature for many college students — but experts say this habit may come at a cost. A 2022 UCLA study found 85% of students watch lectures and recordings at faster speeds.?

Puryear said she prefers to save time by spending less time watching the recordings.?

“I usually watch at faster speeds because the lecturer is talking too slowly, and I don’t want to spend a lot of time on the material,” Puryear said. “If I need to, I will go back and re-listen and slow things down as needed. The more you consume media at that pace, the more it feels like normal pacing.”

Although watching educational material at faster speeds may not seem beneficial, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry Evita Singh said the effects can be useful, depending on the material.

“For more familiar or simple material that students are watching, that faster speed can actually be more efficient,” Singh said.? “The concern is for the more complex or new information, which is a lot of what these lectures tend to be.”?

Singh said watching academic content at higher speeds can also pose a detriment to students’ abilities to retain information because they have less time to process the material.

?“If you are going to watch something at a faster speed, it’s important to actively engage with the materials by pausing or taking notes to reflect,” Singh said.??

For many students, Singh said watching lectures at higher speeds feels like the only option due to poor attention spans and low-stimulating material.?

While there is no definitive average attention span, Singh said a student’s attention span can be affected by multiple environmental factors, such as background noise, text messages and social media notifications.??

“Students are often doing important tasks, like studying, while they’re distracted,” Singh said. “A lot of studying nowadays happens on laptops or through phone or video lectures, and many students have a lot of tabs open. Using phones with constant social media and text alerts can impact sustained attention and attention span.”

Singh said this pattern of multitasking between studying and other tasks leads to passive learning and can negatively affect student attention spans.?

“When I think about passive versus active learning, it seems that when students are studying, they’re doing it in more passive ways because there’s a lot of multitasking,” Singh said. ‘They’re not actually learning the material as well, and that deep, uninterrupted focus is less common, which then makes it so much more challenging to maintain attention.”

Puryear said that distractions, such as her phone and social media, make it difficult to study for long periods of time.?

“I was trying to do my assignment, but I kept getting on my phone,” Puryear said. “What should have taken me 30 minutes took me over an hour because I kept getting on TikTok and Instagram. I just take it as, ‘I clearly need a break.’”?

Although it isn’t as entertaining as scrolling on TikTok or watching Instagram Reels, Singh said being able to tolerate boredom is important for students and their long-term memories.

“Having constant stimulation all the time can be very exhausting and can lead to burnout,” Singh said. “It definitely matters to be able to tolerate and have some boredom, because you want to allow memory consolidation.”

When students allow themselves to be bored, Singh said they are making room for their memory to be properly stored?

“When you do this, you’ll be able to better problem-solve and get creative, versus if we’re constantly on the go and doing stimulating activities at every second of the day, you’re gonna lose time for deep thinking,” Singh said.

To help students improve their attention spans, Singh invented the “TAKE 5” approach, which she recommends to students.?

“T” stands for taking frequent breaks from studying to reset, “A” stands for actively engaging in one task, “K” stands for keeping distractions minimal, “E” stands for eliminating multitasking and “5” stands for taking five minutes between assignments to reset.”