The fatal lure of acceleration

Yang Sung-hee
The author is a columnist of the JoongAng Ilbo.

I resisted at first. But I, too, have grown used to fast-forwarding when watching videos on my mobile device. When YouTube and streaming services like Netflix first added the option to watch at 1.25x or 1.5x speeds, I raged at the thought of ruining the original work. But due to today’s overflow of content to watch, quick eye-shopping is inevitable.

In consuming content, quality time-spending also has become important. Viewers talk knowingly of a film after watching it with double fast-forward or skipping options — or from just the gist in a few central scenes going around on social media. It is not that they do not have the time, but rather that “time is sometimes more valued than money, with more things to do, see, and enjoy as the economic paradigm shifts from ownership to experiences in a ‘minute-second’ society,” according to an explanation in the book “Trend Korea 2024.”

Songs are also released in “sped-up” version, or 130 to 150 percent faster than the original ones, especially for short-form videos like TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.

In Japan, apps offering 10-minute book summaries are gaining popularity. Speed of app service has become crucial. Real life, in turn, is speeding up. Americans are talking faster than they did in the 1950s, and city residents are walking 10 percent more faster than they did 20 years ago.

People are also losing patience and concentration. Microsoft researchers in Canada discovered that people generally lose concentration after eight seconds today, compared with 12 seconds in 2000, before smartphones became common.

But better time performance does not mean that more time is left for the people. The extra time is just spent watching even more fast-forwarded videos. People are more or less glued to their phones the entire day. Modern labor-saving machines like washers and dryers have not lessened the dreary laundry chore, because people now buy more clothes, change more often, and keep altering washing methods, not to mention buyinkg more soaps to accommodate a higher standard of cleanliness.

Life in the fast lane can also lead to faster aging. Chung Hee-won, a doctor who specializes in senior illness at the Asan Medical Center, thinks those who are in their 30s and 40s today may age and die faster than their parents’ generation did. Although the average life expectancy rate has lengthened for today’s elderly, the young — with different eating habits and a tougher and more stressful environment — may age at a faster rate, as is commonly observed in the United States and other rich countries. Chung, on a radio show, said the younger generation’s penchant for novel food and content could accelerate their aging. He called for national attention to this issue, as a higher propensity to fall ill would increase welfare costs.

Gen MZ in Korea is likely to become the first generation who will be less rich than their parents were. On top of that, they are in danger of aging and dying faster than their parents did. According to Statistics Korea’s Social Trend 2023, twentysomethings were found to be the poorest age group — even worse off than the elderly.

On top of their meager earnings, the younger generation’s debt is rising the fastest. Thirtysomethings were the next. Among those in their 20s, only 27 percent of women and 41 percent of men thought positively about getting married, a sharp fall from a year earlier. Their biggest reason was lack of money. To the young, the advice to slow down in the fast lane may sound like a luxury. But the prospects for this society are getting gloomier by the day.