Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
Next time your boss or professor catches you watching cute cat videos online, tell them that you’re taking the time out to boost your energy, increase your positivity levels, and decrease your negative emotions, and that you have scientific evidence to back up your claims. Don’t blame us when they subsequently fail you in the course or you get in trouble at your job.
This evidence comes courtesy of assistant professor Jessica Gall Myrick, a researcher at Indiana University Media School who has found that watching felines do funny things on YouTube has a profound impact on the viewer’s mood, reducing levels of anxiety, annoyance, and sadness.
“Some people may think watching online cat videos isn’t a serious enough topic for academic research, but the fact is that it’s one of the most popular uses of the Internet today,” Myrick said in a statement. “If we want to better understand the effects the Internet may have on us as individuals and on society, then researchers can’t ignore Internet cats anymore.” Thank goodness.
“We all have watched a cat video online, but there is really little empirical work done on why so many of us do this, or what effects it might have on us,” she added. “As a media researcher and online cat video viewer, I felt compelled to gather some data about this pop culture phenomenon.”
Cheap form of therapy
With the assistance of Mike Bridavsky, a Bloomington, Indiana native and the owner of Lil Bub, a cat featured in a series of online videos, Myrick surveyed nearly 7,000 people. She asked them via social media about their viewing of cat videos, as well as how it impacted their mood.
Those who responded said that they were more energetic and felt more positive after watching cat-related online media than before. They also reported having fewer negative emotions such as anxiety, annoyance, and sadness after watching cat-related online media than they did before.
Approximately 36 percent of participants described themselves as a “cat person,” while about 60 percent said they liked both cats and dogs. They most often viewed Internet feline videos during working hours or when studying, and said that the enjoyment they received from watching the videos typically outweighed any procrastination-related guilt they experiences.
The people who were cat owners and those with specific personality traits, including shyness and agreeableness, were the most likely to watch cat videos, the study found. Nearly one-fourth of all videos watched were sought out by the viewer, while the others were just happened upon.
Overall, the response to watching the videos was largely positive, and Myrick said that based on the results, future research could explore if online cat videos could be used as a form of low-cost therapy. “Even if they are watching cat videos on YouTube to procrastinate or while they should be working,” she said, “the emotional pay-off may actually help people take on tough tasks.”
So here…go ahead and watch. Get sucked down the rabbit hole. It’s good for you.
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