The Impact of Short Clips: Understanding the Negative Effects and How to Improve Your Attention Span

While you are waiting for food to be ready, on your way to work, or before bed, you may try to fill the void and kill boredom by watching short videos on social media, most notably TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook.

You think that one clip does not exceed one minute, so that’s okay, but you end up staying in this state for hours without realizing it.

In addition to wasting time caused by these short clips, excessive viewing negatively affects the mental and psychological health of children and adults alike.

Learn about the impact of short clips and how important it is to be in control of your views.

The pursuit of quick pleasure

A study published by the publishing house indicatedSpringer(Springer) indicates that technology in general can harm the ability of young people to appreciate things that achieve a feeling of satisfaction after they are used to watching clips of a few minutes, and sometimes just seconds.

Jessica Griffin, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, told the site:Free Well Health (Very Well Health) “Short video clips, like candy, give a boost to the dopamine hormone released by the brain’s pleasure centers and promote a sense of satisfaction, and this boost often causes us to want to do more of this, like children in a candy store.”

And a study conducted in 2021 and published by the platform “Science Direct(Science Direct) that watching clips specially selected and curated for you by algorithms activates reward centers in the brain more than watching random video clips.

Unbearable Movies

Researchers called the termThe mind of Tik Tok(TikTok Brain) to refer to the impact of excessive viewing of short clips on human cognition and general mental performance, until films became uninteresting for children and they considered them unbearably slow and boring.

In this regard, the newspaperWall Street Journal(The Wall Street Journal) that excessive viewing of short video clips on TikTok harms children’s brains, indicating that this negative effect is reflected in their cognitive abilities and focus during the study.

And found study Increased boredom in children and adolescents is associated with increased exposure to technology, which later leads to digital addiction.

Your attention shrinks

In turn, psychiatrist Griffin stated that indulging in an endless amount of short videos can lead to problems with attention, concentration and short-term memory.

And a survey conducted by the TikTok platform and transmitted by the “TikTok” website showedWired(Wired) The extent of the harm caused by short clips, as nearly 50% of the platform’s users reported that they could no longer watch clips longer than a minute, describing them as “exhausting and stressful” despite their interest in the topic of the video.

As pointed out by researchers from the Technical University of Denmark in study In 2013, the hashtag lasted an average of 17.5 hours, but in 2016 the most engaged hashtag lasted only 11.9 hours on average.

Symptoms similar to drug addiction

The endless stream of clips is addictive in itself, as users expect to come across interesting clips any second and can’t stop browsing.

I found it study I published in 2015 that Internet addiction causes symptoms similar to drug addiction, including loss of control, withdrawal symptoms, inability to reduce use, and other negative consequences.

This addiction also leads to a gradual shrinkage of the brain, a study published by “European Journal of Radiology(​​​​​European Journal of Radiology) 2013 that online gaming addiction leads to structural atrophy in the frontal cortex of the brain.

influence on reading skills

Visual content always outperforms written text online, because our brains can process visual data faster than long texts.

And with watching video clips all the time, reading skills weaken significantly, especially for children, and specifically for those who use platforms that do not contain any written content, such as TikTok.

How to improve the ability to pay attention

After identifying part of the effect of short clips on you, it may now become clear to you why you should control your views and try to reduce their negative impact on you, and to help you regain your focus and improve your attention span. tips:

Avoid anything that may affect your focus while doing a certain task. Sit at your desk, turn off your phone notifications, and stay away from any other distractions. With practice, this becomes an effective way to increase your attention span.

• Avoid multitasking

Although multitasking makes you feel like you’re working too hard, it actually increases stress levels, and can lead to more mistakes.

Therefore, focusing on a single task ensures that all your mental faculties remain focused on one thing instead of many things that distract you, and this helps you to improve your attention.

• Drink water or chew gum

Drinking water and staying hydrated contributes to enhancing your thinking skills and general cognition.

A research published by Scientific American (Scientific American) that chewing gum raises levels of concentration, and the researchers said that the gum increases the flow of oxygen to the areas of the brain responsible for attention, which leads to increased alertness and attention.

It seems that sport is an ideal solution to most problems, as it not only improves your physical and psychological health, but also positively affects cognitive performance and mental health and helps to develop self-control skills.