Social Media is exploding by millions of similar videos.
An old woman eating sushi, mixing two pieces of slime, cutting a bowl of salad, cleaning a pillow: we may all have bumped into this kind of videos while scrolling on social media pages. A huge number of ‘meaningless’ scenes spread the virtual world. In fact I really was considering them ‘meaningless’ and boring, until I had a conversation with one of my friends, and I was surprised when she used the word “addicted” to describe her tendencies toward ‘ASMR’ videos.
She thinks they are ‘oddly satisfying’ and, and confirmed that she watches them hundreds of times in a day, and, at night they help her to sleep. Not just sleep related, but these videos come under almost all categories – most famous being Fashion, Food (called Mukbangs), Beauty, Spa, Mental Health, etc.
How can a simple video have such a huge psychological effect?
Scientific websites describe ASMR by “the experience of tingling sensations in the crown of the head, in response to a range of audio-visual triggers such as whispering, tapping, and hand movements”. In fact, the letters stand for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response.
Recently, the ASMR become a scientific recommended technique to help patients with insomnia.
A 10 minute YouTube video, that has 2 Million views, shows a woman standing behind her microphone tapping on it, making strange sounds and saying with her breathy and quiet voice: “hello hello, let me relax you, just listen to the video. It’s going to be very comfortable”.
She continues talking the same way, then she took a brush and start moving it over the surface of the microphone and added: “do you feel sleepy?”
This audiovisual experience that lasts 10 mins, is obviously giving relaxation to the viewers. An online questionnaire, made in 2015 by two specialists (Barratt & Davis) proves that people uses ASMR videos for different objectives: 98% relaxation, 82% insomnia, and 82 % stress.
Studies conclude that the most frequently used stimulators were whispering, personal attention, crisp sounds like tapping fingers, slow movements, and repetitive movements.
Not everyone responds in the same way
However, on the other side, not everyone respond to the same stimulator and there is different levels of response. People who suffer from a depression normally feel better when they watch an ASMR video. In fact, studies prove that there is a relation between ASMR videos and psychology, and say that it reduce heart rate.
Poerio, Blakey, Hostler, & Veltri made a number of studies, and conclude that ASMR scenes increase positive emotional states, nevertheless it just works with people who respond to the ASMR triggers.
At the end, our world dive in the virtual ere – continually changing. You can find millions of posts of ASMR on social media, and the number is increasing while the users confirm that these videos help them cope with depression, anxiety, PTSD and other disorders. But can these videos replace psychiatry and psychology?
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