What is ASMR & How YouTube is Playing a Role in It?

YouTube is one of the most widely used websites while video is simply the most widely used content today. This is especially due to the visual form the content that the platform offers. However, that is not the only reason YouTube is popular. It has been gradually gaining popularity on the side due to its sound-based videos as well.

These ‘videos’ are surprisingly valued for their acoustic content and not their visual content. This acoustic content is referred to as autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR). Think of a video that you watched some time and liked the sound in it because it created a certain soothing sensation.

What is ASMR?

ASMR creates a calm or relaxing tingling sensation that starts in your head and goes down throughout the length and breadth of your body. The sensation has also been referred to as brain massage. The experience has often been described similar to getting chills whenever someone plays with your hair or back.

Things to Know About ASMR

The ASMR experience is different for different individuals. Some of the main characteristics of it are as follows:

• Every individual has unique ASMR triggers and responses. Common triggers include:
  • Blowing
  • Crinkling
  • Whispering
• Interestingly, individuals can evolve to become more tolerant to a certain ASMR trigger. Individuals can also feel more interested in different types of ASMR at different moments. Realizing this can become even more complicated when you realize the amount of ASMR content available online is growing at a staggering rate.
• There are dedicated artists committed to developing sounds.
• People now watch or listen to videos with ASMR sounds to fall asleep. Others listen to brain tingles to calm their senses and feel relaxed.
• ASMR has been studied and found to provide temporary relief to people with depression or suffering from stress or chronic pain.

Since voluntary triggering ASMR means that the individual must watch or listen to the videos, some parallels have been drawn with meditation as well. More research is underway to classify ASMR as a form of exercise in the field of meditation and mindfulness.

What are ASMR Triggers?

ASMR episodes are of two types. These include:

• Type A Episodes: These episodes take place without the need for external stimuli. Different sensations are triggered in different individuals from specific thought patterns.
• Type B Episodes: These episodes are triggered by the external stimulation of one or more senses.

Different individuals have different triggers, still there are external stimuli that generally trigger ASMR states in most individuals. Examples of such stimuli include:

• Haircuts
• Getting exposed to slow speech patterns with certain accents
• Focusing on a piece of art
• Getting focused or personal attention from others
• Soft touch on the neck or head from someone else

ASMR has become a widely popular trend and many content developers are attempting to make the most of this opportunity by creating videos that trigger a tingling effect. There are millions of ASMR videos on the video-sharing platform that get watched by tens of millions of people worldwide.