3 Damn Good Reasons To Rethink Watching Vs Reading In Today’s Video Obsessed World

When it comes to blogs vs vlogs, many gravitate towards creating vlogs or videos these days simply because more and more people are watching them.

There’s no question about the ‘perceived’ benefits of using video today. We process information faster, we engage quicker, and it’s socially easier to do. In the army of posts about writing blogs vs creating vlogs, it appears the visual format is now clearly favorable.

So why have an article suggesting the medium of word is better?

Well, the reason you shouldn’t run towards YouTube so soon or think blogging is a waste of time, is because the modern watching vs reading debate scientifically falls in favor of the reader’s side, always, and for damn good reasons.

Let’s see why.

Why Video Is Not The King We Think It Is

Well besides the obvious health deficits in constantly watching videos, such as it leading towards hyper ADD amongst young adults, increases in stress and fits of rage, and bouts of insomnia, the visual medium actually is less helpful towards effective learning than we may know.

While video is the new shiny toy which is the comfortable go-to today (especially for a younger generation replacing the older generations trusted means), that comfort, and easy accessibility brings blind spots in how video can affect us negatively.

We may think it’s quicker for us to process video, and thus leave room for the thousands of other material we will digest in the day ahead, right?

Well actually, no, a big fat NO to be brutally honest.

If we are just talking about watching something for the sake of burning another hour of our life in technology addiction, then video is great for that, but that isn’t particularly useful to us, as we’ll discover.

It’s not news to us that watching TV can be bad for us, yet that same translation seems to get lost when people are watching videos online on YouTube. Is it because the videos are shorter than whole programs or we think hearing directly from a person rather than a corporation somehow makes it more educational and therefore useful?

It’s actually more likely because we associate online video as being accessible and easy, and our brains like to associate easy as useful, but again this isn’t really the case.

We’ve heard this one too: If a picture tells a thousand words then a video tells a million, right?

Again, not quite. Well yes, technically it does tell us more, but this is actually part of the problem.

There’s actually three major issues video present us. ‘Information overload’ is one (more on this in a minute). ‘Distraction’ is another obvious one.

The other comes down to the manner in which videos are typically interacted through, which is usually via a ‘passive’ form of learning.

Active Learning Is A Key Component To Effective Learning

To develop a true understanding of any subject requires our minds to not just take in visual stimulus (video clearly wins here) but to process it in an ‘active’ way.

It may appear that video is benefiting our lives due to the nature of how much easier it is to digest (rather than putting effort into reading an article), but the medium of video simply doesn’t help us in active learning anywhere near as much as the written word does.

This may sound counter-intuitive to many who have accepted that video is both easier and more helpful in learning, but actually the latter just doesn’t add up.

Why?

For a start, active learning requires you to truly think about the material you are processing.

When processing visual information subliminally or passively (as is often the case with video), so much of the information interpreted is actually redundant to what we need to know.

We end up cramming our minds with a lot of wasted information, or which we haven’t really implemented to ‘stick’ in our minds properly (which active learning ensures we do).

What? Rubbish, you might be saying.

But think about it. Let’s take a typical video.

Now think about a news channel doing a story on some event happening in the day. Let’s say an unfortunate bus accident on a bridge is making the news.

Now this kind of story grabs attention. People are generally curious about something unfamiliar and video brings this to their attention quickly.

Besides this potentially being distracting to something else we should be focusing on, what we don’t see is just how much wasted information we process when watching that video sample.

We have so many contexts happening around the screen that is irrelevant to the actual story, but we take that in anyway.

You see, visual processing doesn’t really work like selective hearing does. We can’t tune or filter out what we don’t want or need to see.

In audio we don’t have the visual stimulus to paint the picture, so we focus on the words more. The words become clearer as we’ve listened more attentively to hear them to paint our own picture. Our senses heighten.

Yet even audio can be a form of passive learning as we can very easily just take in information we hear without really thinking about it.

However, when reading an article we strip out even more fat. Reading puts the emphasis on us to present both the visual in our minds and the demeanor in which it is presented.

Now to some this might appear like it’s taking up more energy than simply watching a video, but the difference is in the active learning process that reading promotes.

It gives us the opportunity to only focus on the important substance, not on all the fluff around the edges.

Simply put, reading gets us thinking (actively), while video gets us following (passively).

How Our Learning And Memory Is Affected By Stimulus

Stimulus is at the heart of it all.

There’s a lot of people growing up knowing a lot about a lot of frankly pretty useless information, that tomorrow will be replaced by even more new stimulus, and making the original stimulus redundant only shortly after.

Just think of celebrity obsession to get the picture.

If we were hard drives then we would be filling up our hard drive with a lot of irrelevant stimulus that is passively taken in and not really utilized.

Well actually we are like hard drives.

Our hard drives just aren’t as sophisticated as we may think. We simply process information linearly, one little bit after another. (It’s why multitasking never really works – unless you learn quick adaption techniques).

If we are forcing too much information at one time, as video often produces, then our hard drive gets to a point where it struggles to cope. It gets backed up, like a computer slowing down with dozens of programs open at the same time.

Yet we don’t have an internal fan to cool us down. Our memory simply can’t process all this information or stimulus at once so we end up coping though skipping over information to make things easier, and the result is we only remember fractions of events rather than fully-focused memories.

The worst part is our processor doesn’t know which parts were meant to be important and which stimulus was pretty much useless fluff. It just takes the easy road in processing as much as it can as quick as possible so it can go back to energy-saving mode.

Unfortunately, the easy stuff is often the less important stuff. So we can end up remembering everything there is to know about a celebrities diet habits but can’t remember how some complicated math equation works.

The sad irony is that our memories can’t improve at the same rate as information is thrown at it, so the more we seek high stimulus mediums (that are more likely to create an information overload) the less we are able to actually relax our minds, energy-save, and then form lasting memories.

Procrastination, here we come.

When you see what is happening to our own hard drive then it’s no wonder video is watched passively when you think about it.

Our minds are spending so much time processing all the surrounding stimulus that it’s just easier for us to switch off into passive mode rather than actively think about the information we are presented (it’s why people fall asleep during movies).

‘But our minds prefer visual information’ you might be saying.

Yes, the human brain is more used to processing visual information and interpreting them, but that doesn’t mean that what it is processing is actually that good for us.

We all like cake but should we eat it?

So, How Does Video Distract Us So Easily?

The correlation between passive learning and distraction should be clear by now.

If our minds aren’t engaged and focused, or only focused for a limited time, then we don’t find this deeper sense of focus of ‘flow’.

The incredibly insightful and interesting topic of deep learning and optimal experience is masterfully researched by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his groundbreaking book Flow. Cal Newport also made a book about Deep Work, which I haven’t read myself, but reviews seem to put it in good light.

Instead we become rabbits in headlights and see all this inviting stimulus around us, one video after another. We think we are learning something but procrastination does that to us.

Without a deeper sense of flow or deliberate practice it is easy to fall into a documentary binge where we think we are actively focused for hours, learning all sorts about all sorts, only to realize another day has been pretty much wasted building up knowledge in areas that aren’t really that relevant towards our goals.

Again, to unwind and passively watch video to simply rest doesn’t matter so much to our goals, and we all do it, but how much of this seemingly innocent binge watching is actually debilitating our ability to actively learn when we need to?

Actually, quite a lot.

It sets up habits. Patterns of learning where our mind gets too comfortable with the passive form and this just leads to more distraction and a cycle that keeps repeating.

Beyond this, passively learning can be dangerous for us. It leads to easily and deeply ingrained unconscious biases and conditioning where we end up losing our ability to think for ourselves.

To break that cycle what do we need to do?

Hello Reading, My Old Friend. (Active Techniques That Help)

Reading might seem like an old form compared to watching these days, but to read a blog rather than to solely watch a video of the same material has added benefits to our learning.

We learn to develop an internal filter better. We relax more, become distracted less. We are able to continue in active and mindful learning much longer, and cut out the surrounding noise and stimulus easier.

That’s not to say video isn’t useful. As mentioned at the start of the article, video has its benefits too, but for them to truly benefit our mind development then we have to learn in chunks rather than long drawn-out binges, and we have to actively implement what we learn rather than just follow along passively with what we are witnessing.

As for vloggers, creating videos that engage the user to actively be able to implant what it is you are teaching or preaching would be so much more beneficial.

Of course, people won’t do so at first as their alternative option is to just watch something passively, but too much of that will just clog up their limited space for processing information.

It’s why bitesize courses work so well, but with the vast wealth of information being added on the internet daily it becomes harder and harder to filter and ignore, and it becomes harder for people to ‘find’ the time to read over watch.

Well, that is a mistake in itself as it’s not really about time but about energy.

If we spend so much time watching more but reading less, then again, we just cram our minds full of information that is then processed slower, and our energy is eaten up.

Time has little to do with it when our energy is being badly utilized.

A good solution is to find your most active time of the day and dedicate it to active learning and bitesized focused sessions (a good reason the pomodoro technique became popular).

Then minimize your digital life, and unnecessary clutter around your real life.

Give yourself sufficient times of rest to ensure you aren’t always passively learning because your brain is constantly in a processing backlog (and therefore automatically tries to make that processing easier by switching to an autopilot passive mode).

And when possible, always choose to read over watch. The benefit of reading gets your brain thinking actively. You have to paint your own picture of the story. It makes you more creative as a result, so long as you are actively involved.

Active reading might take longer but it leads to less wasted stimulus, as you focus on implanting what you are leaning as you are doing it.

Beware of those fake promises that say you can learn to read 10x faster to get more productive. The thing is, you can certainly learn to read faster but there’s no point of what you are taking in isn’t retained.

Your retention rate is far more important. That’s the sign of a healthy mind actively working.

How do you test whether you are retaining information well?

Don’t just fly onto the next article or video. Read information again. It takes us at least 8 times of subliminal cues for something to stick in our mind (but less if actively focused).

For something to stick, then repetition is helpful, yet varied repetition is the most helpful as it ensures you don’t fall into autopilot ‘passive’ ways.

Wait. There Is Useful Stimulus Out There Too

It may seem like the solution is to cut out stimulus all together, stay in an enclosed room with the same four bland walls and do nothing.

I’m pretty sure the psychological effects on locking prisoners up and throwing away the key would argue against this point.

Stimulus is something that helps humans create. It makes us unique as animals who can imagine and change our environment. It’s essential for humans to evolve, so we do need it, but it’s the nature in which we interact with surrounding stimulus that counts.

In this sense stimulus can work for us or against us.

There’s no doubt about it. The more mindless stimulus taken in to process the less our brains can remained focused with energy. Energy is simply used up.

But, what about when stimulus creates energy? Like a creative breakthrough. Or when we draw on inspiration?

The initial burst of energy is clear but actually we often end up really tired after playing. The initial adrenaline helps us along but it’s hard to sustain so we inevitably crash after some time.

That feeling of having so much energy is addictive, so many people go in search of it, through coffee or other stimulants.

Relying on stimulus to be a constant up inevitably leads to a bigger crash though, so while we absolutely want to be inspired by our surroundings we really have to ensure that our mental processing of stimulus isn’t going to be pushed into over drive too much.

If it does then passivity follow and that’s where comfort zones and conditioned bias start forming, where you watch videos and start becoming influenced to ideals without thinking whether they are actually in line with your own morals or goals.

Just consider how easily influenced we can become by taking in certain media stories steeped in bias, our daily conversations and internet searches, or our societal environmental influence.

On the other side, stimulus can also be good for us when our mind has an idea or goal planted in mind.

Take an artist searching for inspiration for a painting they are curating. An artist would be actively trying to find stimulus as inspiration towards helping them develop ideas.

This doesn’t actually mean the artist needs to be switched on 100% to come up with ideas (as actually too much direct focus on trying to solve a problem can lead to mental blocks, which every creative knows about at some point on their career).

Instead what happens is ‘parameters’ are set, often subconsciously. So if an artist is seemingly not at work directly at one time their mind is actually still at play working for them to find relevant stimulus that fits the brief.

This is known as whitespacing, and it’s a technique that can be practiced and is useful to anyone (not just artists) getting stimulus working for them rather than being overloaded by it.

For those who don’t think they are creative then it’s not because you can’t create, but because your mind is often influenced by the passive types of stimulus that watching videos and scrolling through social feeds etc does to your memory.

For your memory to take in stimulus and cement it to help you form new ideas you have to give it room to breathe, which is whitespacing.

It may be best to think of stimulus as a carrot dangled in front of a donkey. It’s largely most beneficial to actively influencing you when it’s teasing you along to keep going and search for inspiration, but without overwhelming you enough to fall into a passive mode.

Video heightens our potential stimulus too much leading us to tire quickly and forget, whereas reading is like a carrot dangled, where the next line leads us to more of the story, which we can then imagine in due course rather than being too overwhelmed in one go.

So, when it comes to seeing whether watching vs reading is more beneficial for our learning development and memory then it should be clear enough now who your brain thanks more.

A Final Request

Despite this research into viably good reasons to ensure we don’t overdo our video consumption, and level it out more with more active reading, the hard part is actually getting through to those who are already sucked into the ease and accessibility of video.

As we have seen in this article, the shiny new toy of video can have a huge psychologically potential drain on people in ways we know about today, but possibly in even more ways than we may realize yet in the future.

So, hear I ask a favor. One I normally do not plead or beg for, but if you have made it to the end then great, and I applaud you for making it this far, and thank you for reading this, hopefully, insightful article.

It took a lot of research and a lot of concerted active learning and effort to put together.

However, it is wasted if the message doesn’t get across to those who need it the most. So, please share this article with someone you think may truly benefit from it.

After all, at Richly that is our aim – to help as many people as we can to think beyond their current limitations and utilize their potential to add more towards our humanity.

You will be adding a great deal just by sharing the kind of information that helps people make conscious changes in themselves, as often people only fall into passive modes of thinking because surrounding society has made it far easy to do so rather than for us to challenge popularized or set ways of thinking.