Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
At eleven at night, a girl in Pune whom I will never meet opens her laptop, sets a timer for fifty minutes and starts to study. I open mine and do the same. Nearly four thousand strangers are watching her on YouTube, and none of us says a word. The chat is switched off. There is only the scratch of her pen and, now and then, the soft slap of a page being turned.
Older relatives find this baffling. My uncle asked me, not unkindly, why I needed a stranger on a screen to make me open a chemistry textbook. It is a fair question, and the honest answer is a little embarrassing. Alone in my room, I drift. Ten minutes of revision becomes forty minutes of reels. With her on the screen, I feel watched in the gentlest possible way, the way a library makes you lower your voice even when nobody has asked you to.
There is a name for this, body doubling, and it is often suggested to people who find it hard to begin a task. But I suspect its pull for my generation has less to do with method than with mood. We were told the internet would connect us. Mostly it has taught us to perform: the polished post, the screenshot of a result. These study streams ask for nothing. Nobody is ranked. Nobody is liked or ignored.
I am not naive about it. The streamer earns from our attention, and a silent room on a screen is still a screen. Yet on the nights when the syllabus feels interminable, that quiet company is enough to keep me at my desk until the timer rings.
Which of the following best expresses the central idea of the passage?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → Silent study streams give the writer an undemanding kind of company that helps with studying, in spite of their limits.
The whole passage is about why silent study streams help the writer, and where they fall short.
- Alone, the writer drifts to reels. With the streamer on the screen, the writer feels “watched in the gentlest possible way” and keeps studying.
- The streams “ask for nothing”. Nobody is ranked or judged. So the company is undemanding, which means it asks nothing of you.
- The last paragraph gives the limits. The streamer earns from the viewers, and it is “still a screen”. Yet the quiet company keeps the writer at the desk.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: Silent study streams are a passing online fashion that older people are unable to understand. — Incorrect. Wrong focus: The uncle does find the habit strange. But that is one line in the second paragraph. The passage is about what the streams give the writer.
Option 2: Watching a study stream helps students cut down the hours they waste on short videos. — Incorrect. Too narrow: The writer does lose time on reels when studying alone. But this is one small point, not the main idea of the passage.
Option 4: Body doubling, once a method for people who struggle to begin tasks, has become the main way young people study. — Incorrect. Overstated: The passage gives body doubling only as a name for the habit. It never says this is the main way young people study.