The cozy, relaxing and unsettling appeal of YouTube ambient videos

Happy (early) birthday, YouTube. To celebrate the site’s 20th anniversary, we present: The InsideHook Guide to YouTubea series of creator profiles, channel recommendations and in-depth looks at the viral, controversial and unstoppable video sharing giant.

It’s no secret that social media has shortened our attention spans. All day long, we scroll through 10-second TikToks, constantly refresh our emails, and scroll through an endless stream of Instagram posts—and these scatterbrained habits have an insane effect on our concentration. In an ongoing study, researchers have examined how long an average person at work can concentrate on a task on a screen before moving on to another task: In 2004, the average attention span was about two and a half minutes. In 2024, the average was just 47 seconds.

For some, the solution to this problem lies in social media itself.

Right this second, tens of thousands of people around the world are watching YouTube ambience videos. Well, the videos play, but Watch out maybe isn’t the right word. People view these hour-long, high-quality animations set to music or other sounds (such as the sounds of a coffee shop) as they work, study, or just go about their day. Sometimes they’re visible, sometimes they’re just humming along in a hidden browser tab among a dozen open tabs.

Some of the most popular live streaming videos in this genre, like those from the Lofi Girl channel, attract tens of thousands of listeners at once. Others, like the channel’s three-hour coffee shop scenes “Relaxing Jazz Piano,” reach millions of views as people listen again and again. As a listener, it’s easy to forget that a video is currently playing. In the above scene, titled “A Rainy Day in 4K Cozy Coffee Shop,” rain pelts large windows illuminated by flickering candles while jazz music plays in the background. The animation feels alive, like you can squint and see yourself.

When things get stuffy in our home offices, kitchen tables, or cubicles, these videos transport us to a new place and provide a backdrop that promotes concentration. It has often been said that certain music can help us increase productivity and improve our concentration and information retention. According to Dr. However, according to Zari Taylor, a lecturer at New York University who studies digital and popular culture, there is a reason why people are increasingly turning to YouTube instead of their favorite music streaming service.

“It adds this visual quality and that says more about how social media is replacing other forms of traditional media like background TV or background broadcasts,” Taylor tells InsideHook. “Essentially, it’s more accessible to have Lofi Girl playing in the background or any live video via YouTube.”

These videos do not contain advertising, dialogue or changing scenes – as would be the case on television or radio – to distract our attention from the task at hand. As for the benefits of these types of videos for YouTube, they are a way to retain viewers in times of short attention spans; It’s a strategy that other social platforms are happy to adopt.

I find [these videos represent] something that comes from a different time, especially for Generation Z who can’t really remember life before social media.

– Dr. Zari Taylor, faculty member at NYU

In February 2022, TikTok increased the maximum video length from three to ten minutes, and just this summer the platform began testing 60-minute videos. But even though apps like TikTok try to maintain attention spans over longer periods of time, YouTube is still where people go for this type of content. Finally, the maximum running time on the video sharing site is 12 hours. So, just like sitting in a real coffee shop, you can press play on a coffee shop scene and live in it for 30 minutes or three hours – however long you want.

“You can increase your productivity based on the length of the video, and that’s the appeal of it,” says Taylor. “If I want to work for an hour, I leave it running in the background.”

While these mood videos go back years, to clips like the roaring Christmas log crackling in silence or in tune with Christmas music, they are starting to take on many new forms. It’s not just office workers looking for a break from chatter around the water cooler with a coffeehouse atmosphere, or students drowning out their roommates with lofi beats while playing video games. Recently, clips of people running on treadmills at home went viral on TikTok and Instagram, not because of the exercise routines, but because of what they were watching: YouTube videos that simulate walking through local locations Harry Potter Universe, like Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. The people who posted them said that the background animations were the incentive that motivated them to take action.

But is that much background stimulation really necessary to complete an everyday task, like walking or filling out a spreadsheet? Of course not, but it appears to be an extension of another social media phenomenon.

“We can think about it [these accounts] “Like any other content creator or any other account, where you form some kind of parasocial relationship with it and it serves a need that you have,” Taylor says. Case in point: There’s a Lofi Girl Reddit page specifically for her channel and variations of it with over 44,000 members.

For one thing, our perception of communal meeting places such as cafes or parks – common locations for mood videos – has changed during the pandemic. These once easily accessible places were either closed or filled with a sense of fear, which in turn led people to find comfort and familiarity through online representation. But why are people? Despite it Do you watch videos from these places when these types of establishments generally operate as they did before the pandemic?

Maybe it’s because we’ve become more socially awkward after the pandemic. Towards the end of 2020 The New York Times reported on this epidemic of social skills, writing about how people who spend long periods of time in isolation—prisoners, astronauts, polar explorers—saw a decline in their social skills, just as our muscles weaken when they are not used enough.

“But that was four years ago.” True, but the fact is that it still influences us – the magazine Philadelphia wrote about this phenomenon back in April, citing statistics about our socialization skills: More than half of Americans have difficulty forming relationships with others. We can’t escape our screens. We meet people less. We feel good when we have fewer friends. “Third places” – the places outside home and work where people gather – are disappearing.

Some even see the Internet as a newer third place, given how many people spend time and find communities there. With generations of young adults chronically online, it is an interesting phenomenon that people are connected and active when it comes to social media, but are socially disconnected from personal relationships and experiences. These factors, in turn, create a perfect storm where mood videos offer people solutions to loneliness and anti-socialization without them having to actually do anything. It’s something that Taylor says could impact Generation Z the most.

“I find [these videos represent] something that comes from a different time, especially for Generation Z who don’t really remember life before social media, unlike Millennials where we remember hanging out with our friends without that Everyone was on the phone or it was all about content or social media.”

And while Taylor also cites the pandemic as a reason for the influx of viewers turning to these mood videos, she says another factor may be a combination of economics and accessibility.

“On the one hand, being in these rooms [in real life] “It’s not necessarily free and people may not have the time for it because of their work, child care or school schedule,” she says. “Furthermore, the specific ‘aesthetics’ or charisma they seek may not be accessible in their environment, making them a form of escape outside their context or environment.”

Prices in cafes, bars and restaurants have all gone up, and given today’s economic climate, it’s not a complete surprise to say that people – and not just young adults – are finding it difficult to keep up. These videos are, in a way, another way to experience these third places without actually having to spend the money and go there in person.

But what people gain through escapism—or focus, or motivation—they lose from real human experiences. We work online, we talk to people through text messages and emails, we scroll through social media, we watch shows and listen to music through internet-connected apps. So it only makes sense that when trying to escape into an environment that’s perfectly tailored to our desires, the Internet offers its own solution – one that doesn’t require logging out.

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