The impact of short form media on the attention span
Terms like “TikTok brain” and “short-video addiction” have emerged in recent years to capture societal trends that have come with the dramatic transformation of our media landscape over the past decade. The world now counts over 1.5 billion TikTok users, but any user of modern media can also attest: it has never been this easy to expose our brains to a flood of online content, and to switch between visual input at such a rapid speed. This bears the question: how do our brains cope with this surge in sensory input? Many new studies are devoted to studying whether and how we are adapting to meet the new demands of our social environments.
Media intake and the brain
A study published earlier this year reported that short-video addiction—described as excessive consumption of short-form media that interferes with other daily activities—was associated with both changes in our brain and molecular changes in the expression of our genes. The research showed alterations in multiple regions, notably the cerebellum (often referred to as the “little brain” located at the back of the head) and the frontal cortex. The authors linked findings in these regions to cognitive abilities, sensory processing, and addiction-related behaviors.
One theory, posed by researchers last year, is that prolonged intake of short videos suppresses "higher-order" brain areas responsible for self-control, whilst in turn further engaging "lower-order" areas for emotional processing. This imbalance could help explain the addictive behaviours. Supporting this idea, their study found that short video addiction was linked to reduced neural firing in the executive control network—an "higher-order" area important for self-control and decision-making.
Chicken and the egg?
An important caveat remains: most findings in scientific literature to date are correlational, meaning that it is unclear whether excessive exposure to short video content is the cause of changes in brain function and structure - or the other way around. This relationship may potentially go two ways; our short-form media intake and its attentional demands may to some extent ‘train’ our brains, such as by strengthening cerebellar pathways important for rapid sensory processing. On the other hand, some people’s brains may make them more vulnerable to developing short-form media addiction. One person's biological wiring may for instance make them more susceptible to these media behaviours than other people. Starting an experimental trial to parse out these questions is not an easy task, not least due to the many practical and ethical challenges that come with trying to shape and manipulate people’s media landscape.
Towards understanding and intervening
One potential solution for this causal question could lie with the world’s awareness of phone and social media addiction. Many countries have or are in the process of rolling out interventions on phone use in schools. Such widespread policy change poses an opportunity for epidemiologists and other fellow scientists to explore what’s called a ‘natural experiment’: treating a policy change in society as an ‘experimental trial’ - and studying its effects.
Many may wonder, even if our understanding of the impact of social media addiction becomes clearer in the next years, what help this would provide to everyone who’s been exposed to short video content for years. Interestingly, experimental trials have hinted that some of the worrying developments in our cognitive functioning may be reversible, with physical exercise and music intervention markedly improving cognitive performance in college students with unpleasant emotions after of exposure to certain video content. With much more research still to be done, the fascinating quest to understand and address effects of short-form media on our brains should interest both scientists and society as a whole.