Research on the long-term impacts of short-form video consumption is still lacking, but recent studies show concerning associations with cognition and mental health.

Research on the long-term impacts of short-form video consumption is still lacking, but recent studies show concerning associations with cognition and mental health.

With short-form video now dominant on social media, researchers are racing to understand how the highly engaging, algorithm-driven format may be reshaping the brain.

From TikTok to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, short-form video content has become a cornerstone of just about every online platform, including LinkedIn and even Substack. But increasingly, studies are finding associations between heavy consumption of short-form video and challenges with focus and self-control.

The research, though still early, seems to echo widespread concerns over “brain rot,” an internet slang term that the Oxford University Press defines as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state.” (The term became so mainstream that the academic publishing house crowned it as its 2024 word of the year.)

  • ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.oneEnglish
    191·
    14 hours ago

    With short-form video now dominant on social media, researchers are racing to understand how the highly engaging, algorithm-driven formatmay be reshaping the brain.

    The issue isn’t the short form video. It’s the algorithm behind everything to keep people addicted to what ever social media website.

    • stickly@lemmy.world
      5·
      11 hours ago

      Short form video (and it’s sibling, the infinite headline scrollers) are the final evolution of engagement architecture. There’s nothing inherently nefarious about an algorithm presenting content, but these platforms fracture the content into a bottomless feed of tiny dopamine doses, requiring some smart behavior to present all of that.

      I’d argue that a short form video platform couldn’t exist without a finely tuned algorithm. With long form videos the barrier to creation limits the pool of available content. A smaller and deeper pool is more manageable for manual curation. A wider and shallower pool is exponentially harder:

      • Just navigating each video (even a <1s interaction) adds a large overhead to consuming the content. This could be 16% of your time watching 6s vines.
      • You basically have to watch most of the clip to judge it’s quality. Even a 3s glance could put a hard floor of watching 5-10% of all content.
      • The amount of video topics in short form dilutes high quality creators. Is it likely that a creator who covers 3 topics in interesting, in-depth 30 minute videos could match that engaging runtime with 90+ diverse topics?

      Take out a content distilling/targeting algorithm and your platform is unusable.