An article in The Boston Globe claims that our "demand for instant results is seeping into every corner of our lives." The need for instant gratification is not new, but our expectation of "instant" has become faster. The article states:

Retailers are jumping into same-day delivery services. Smartphone apps eliminate the wait for a cab, a date, or a table at a hot restaurant. Movies and TV shows begin streaming in seconds. But experts caution that instant gratification comes at a price: It's making us less patient …

We've come to expect things so quickly that researchers found people can't wait more than a few seconds for a video to load. One researcher examined the viewing habits of 6.7 million internet users. How long were subjects willing to be patient? Two seconds. After that they started abandoning the site. After five seconds, the abandonment rate is 25 percent. When you get to 10 seconds, half are gone." The results offer a glimpse into the future. As Internet speeds increase, people will be even less willing to wait for that cute puppy video. The researcher, who spent years developing the study, worries someday people will be too impatient to conduct studies on patience.