Technology and Expectation of Instant Gratification

As our technology moves faster, our patience grows thinner. A huge study from UMass Amherst, which surveyed 6.7 million users, showed that viewers tend to abandon online videos if they take more than 2 seconds to load. Most users stay on a single web page long enough to read only 20% of the text on that page, according to a survey by the Nielsen Norman Group.

On an emotional level, posting a Facebook status, a tweet, or an Instagram photo feeds on and reinforces our need for instant approving feedback. Becoming too used to instant gratification in the virtual world can lead to poor choices and major frustrations in the real world.

--Liz Soltan