Attention Spans Have Shortened with the Rise of Social Media
Photo Credit: Alpha Photo via Flickr
Spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, the popularity of “short-form” videos has increased explosively across social media platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. Now, three years past their initial growth, experts are debating the effect of short-form videos on the attention spans of their biggest consumer: teenagers.
Short-form content emerged as a major force on the internet in 2013 with the rise of Vine, a social media platform that quickly became one of the fastest growing of its time.
In 2016, as Vine's popularity started to wane, a Chinese tech startup by the name of ByteDance launched a new short-form video hosting service called TikTok, which was nearly identical to its Chinese counterpart "Douyin", but hosted on separate servers due to China’s internet laws.
TikTok's popularity began to soar soon after its launch, and with the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, the app began to grow at an unprecedented rate, reaching almost 800 per cent of its size in 2018, according to CNBC. As lockdowns and social distancing measures became the new norm, people found that they needed to find a way to connect.
“People’s mental immunity [were at a low], and [we saw] a spike in anxiety, depression and a fear or phobia of the unknown,” explained clinical psychologist Dr. Prerna Kohli to Vice Magazine, “Which is why people are turning to apps like TikTok, because it provides instant gratification, applause and appreciation.”
TikTok was the most downloaded app on the app store in 2020 according to Forbes, with 850 million downloads. It reached one billion monthly users the next year.
Since then, multiple social media platforms have adopted the short-form video format due to the success of TikTok.
Meta recently introduced Reels to Instagram as a competitor to TikTok | Photo Credit: Solen Feyissa via Flickr
For example, Meta’s reduction in the size of their audience caused them to “chase where the buzz seems to be,” creating features such as Instagram Reels, said Richard Lachman, associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s The Creative School, to the CBC.
These videos are often highly engaging, with viewers scrolling through multiple videos in quick succession.
"The way it becomes addictive - when things make us feel good - is the release of dopamine in the brain and you want more and more,” explained Dr. Williams of Bangor University to BBC News when asked about the popularity of TikTok. "Because TikTok videos are short and sweet, they keep your attention going from one to another."
With short-form videos becoming a popular form of entertainment, consumers are concerned about their impact on attention spans. Yet, attention span is a nebulous concept, argues Dr. Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California. It changes depending on how much effort the consumer puts into sustaining it. Since watching short form videos is not a demanding task, viewers allow their attention to wander.
“In the last five, six years, we found [attention spans] to average about 47 seconds,” she said in a 2023 interview with the APA. “Around 2012 we found it to be 75 seconds.”
However, this drop in attention span has not been proven to be linked to shorter video lengths, and some experts attribute the popularity of short-form videos to the public’s previously declining attention span. Mark claims, in the same interview, that researchers are not sure “if there is any causal connection [between] these two parallel trends,” calling it a “chicken and egg question.”
One of the key factors that makes scrolling apps like these so successful and potentially harmful is their algorithms. The viewer does not get the chance to pick which videos they want to watch; instead, the algorithm recommends videos actively in an endless feed. The algorithm does this based on the viewers interests and actions, such as how long they watch a video, the way they interact with it, and even things like location or device data, as stated by TikTok in 2020. The elimination of choices reduces the effort needed to stay on the app, and this creates a feedback loop that can lead to the consumer constantly seeking for instant gratification or the next dopamine hit, rather than engaging in deeper, more sustained forms of attention.
YouTube Shorts is YouTube’s short-form content section, with a maximum video length of 60 seconds | Photo Credit: Alphabet Inc. via Wall Street Journal
In a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers found that the constant desire for instant gratification can have negative effects on mental health, including increased stress, anxiety, lack of motivation, and even depression.
More importantly, this constant seeking of instant gratification can make individuals less likely to achieve long term goals; which requires patience and the ability to endure delayed gratification.
Experts are still debating over the effects these types of short form content may cause and more studies are needed to better understand the impact of short-form videos on attention spans and other abilities among its teenagers.
“It’s embarrassing that we know so little about TikTok and its effects,” said Philipp Lorenz-Spreen, a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, in an interview with The Guardian.