Your Brain on TikTok

I’ve always wondered what happens when every time I scroll though my TikTok For You Page or the Reels section of my instagram, it will feel that I’ve only been looking down for a few minutes, but somehow 30, 60, even (ashamedly) 90 minutes have gone by in seemly no time at all. Or how I can’t seem to watch shows or movies without also scrolling through my phone, often times having to rewind a scene in a show because I was too engrossed in whatever was going on in the screen in my hand than in the screen on my wall.

There has consistently been research and anecdotal evidence about the negative effects of new technology (see: video games v. increased societal violence, the internet rotting our brains, etc.), though the rise of social media has had broad affects on our society as we know it, including political influence, fake news, and the rise of depression in children and teens. One interesting shift in the way our society consumes social media is the rise of short-form video. While there is much debate as to what makes a video “short-form”, there is a generally accepted consensus that a short-form video is one that is 10–60 seconds in length.

Video’s importance is only likely to grow given its popularity amongst younger people with 1 in 2 millennial and Gen Z consumers saying they “don’t know how they’d get through life without” video, according to a study from YouTube (source). Additionally, a study done by Deloitte found that the proportion of US consumers watching short-form video (15 minutes or less) grew to 74 percent in 2018. Furthermore, the numbers are higher for Gen Z (84 percent) and millennials (81 percent). The study also found that nearly 40 percent of Americans spend more than one hour per week watching short-form video clips on social media platforms (source).

Short-form video is also driving changes in our interactions with social media platforms, with a 2020 study from Wyzowl (acontent marketing service) reporting that social media users share videos at twice the rate than any other form of content (source). It should then go without saying that with this shift, companies are now exploring how best to capture sales and awareness of customers through short-video marketing. It’s proving to be effective as well — the Deloitte study also found that people who frequently watch short clips are more receptive to advertising. Many brands are recognizing the power of short-form video and including it as a central feature of their marketing strategies, particularly those looking to target diverse, engaged, and younger audiences, who can be notoriously difficult to reach.

In an article on short-form marketing, Forbes contends that the Millennial generation of consumers were the first generation to make known their preference for authentic content. Generation Z goes even further: they’ve made it apparent that they want authenticity, an understanding of who is controlling the narrative and who is being the camera. For this reason, influencer marketing has risen as one of the more effective marketing methods to target younger generations. In the Deloitte study, more than 70% of participants said they would be more satisfied with their online experience if they received targeted relevant ads in their online experience. Additionally, about half of participants were ready to share personal information in exchange for ads that align with their needs and interests. This could demonstrate our willingness to share personal parts of ourselves to make ads more effective, but perhaps it comes full circle back to “authenticity”.

Now we get around to your brain on social media, and more importantly on short-form video apps like TikTok. At a basic level, studies have found that the average human attention span is down to eight seconds from 12 when it was originally measured in 2000 (source). The same study explored the theory of brain plasticity, which states that the human brain has the capability to change itself over time. It is able to rewire and form new capabilities throughout the course of one’s life. This ability allows humans to adapt to new or changing situations in their environment. For this reason, there could be a link drawn that as content becomes shorter, human brains can rewire themselves to expect shorter content, reducing the overall ability to focus for prolonged periods of time. There is also correlations drawn between the ability to remain focused on a single task and the volume of media consumption, social media usage, multi-screening behavior and adoption of technology — suggesting that future generations (beginning with Millennials and Generation Z) that grow up around social media and technology will continue to see a degradation of attention span.

And it’s important to note the impacts of lower attention. A lesser attention span can have several negative effects, including poor work and school performance, forgetting or missing important information, and difficulties in relationships with communication (source). In addition to the more common shrinking attention spans, there has been some disturbing and unprecedented effects of video and creators are to users’ psyches. One German study coined the phrase “mass social media-induced illness”, after studying teenagers who were avid followers of a YouTuber with claimed Tourettes. The affected teenagers presented with similar or identical functional Tourette-like behaviors, which can be clearly differentiated from common tics in Tourette syndrome (source). Similar parallels can be drawn with self diagnosis of autism, ADHD, bipolar, and multiple-personality disorders within teenagers and young adults that gained information from TikTok (source).

While a disturbing example of the pitfalls of social media, my optimism would like to think that not all is lost. There are tools and tips around reducing social media consumption that have been around for years, but I believe are equally effective in reducing short-form content consumption. While totally cutting out social media feels unattainable, if at times impossible, one of the first things anyone can do is be more intentional about usage. For example, only using one screen at a time (no multitasking), leaving phones out of important moments in your day like at dinner or in the bedroom, and, at an extreme, deleting apps that make you feel out of control. One tool that has been recently introduced to iPhones, though has existed on computers and androids, is a native app to implement time limits for certain apps. One could implement this time limit for social media apps that might have addictive properties, like TikTok or YouTube, to “force” a reduction of time on the apps. In the end, there must be a genuine want from the user to reduce consumption of content, as the major tech companies and their advertisers are incentivized to do everything in their power keep your eyes on the screen for as long as possible.