I cannot remember the last time I went to bed without scrolling through Instagram reels for at least 30 minutes. Short form content has taken over the world by storm. About 63% of people watch some type of short form content every day. This has brought a lot of negative effects on people, such as a decline in attention span, ruining dopamine receptors, and an increase in anxiety.

Attention Span
Short form content first exploded when Vine was released in 2013. Videos that were uploaded were up to six seconds long. Once Vine died, social media platforms such as Tiktok, Instagram, and Youtube quickly took over with their own forms of short form content. But short form content truly didn’t take over until the 2020 pandemic. Since people had so much free time indoors, they spent much of that online. To this day, this habit has not healed. Humans have become so reliant on constant distractions. Whether it’s while doing homework, chores, work, or as simple as taking a walk, people are constantly scrolling, listening to music or a podcast, or watching a show. According to The Standard, the average attention span of a human has decreased to eight seconds. They also mention while doing homework, 51% of teens watch TV, 50% use social media, 76% listen to music, and 60% send text messages. People have come to normalize constant distractions at any given time. As I’m writing this I too can’t help but to scroll, text, and listen to music.

Dopamine Receptors
Short form content is frying your dopamine. According to a video by Horses called “We All Got Tricked into Content Addiction”, dopamine isn’t a hormone that creates pleasure, but rather a hormone released anticipating an activity that creates pleasure. Repeating activities that create dopamine creates a standard. So before short form content, things such as reading a book, watching a long video, or staying attentive during a long lecture were the standard. But since short form content, because of its rapid fire dopamine production rate, the standard has been raised dramatically. This makes it significantly harder to stay focused during things that used to be the standard, which were much longer than a 10 second video.

Anxiety
Theodore Roosevelt once said “comparison is the thief of joy.” A study by medrxiv says that short form content has led to an increase in anxiety and other mental health issues such as depression. Studies reveal that short form content leads to users being deeply immersed. This leads to an escapist reality that makes it difficult to control emotions outside of the media. This leads to high levels of anxiety, depression, and coping.

What Can We Do?
What can we do to help with this addiction? The best way is to slowly start removing those distractions from your daily life. Start with activities such as meditation or taking a peaceful walk without music or a podcast playing into your ear. If you’re having trouble focusing on a task, start limiting your phone usage. This can be from only scrolling an hour a day, to not scrolling for a week, and so on. Start watching long form content and create that standard of long form videos or tasks.

Conclusion
With the takeover of short form content, we need to be careful with how much we consume it. Allowing these distractions to become a routinely part of our day can become dangerous. It’s ruining our ability to focus on certain tasks, and it’s also frying our dopamine receptors. The dangers of scrolling increases levels of anxiety or stress. But change can be made, with consistency.