Subway Surfers, slime, fidgets or Minecraft parkour combined with a Get Ready With Me TikTok and a “storytime.” Five things are happening at once, and our brains take it in with the quick efficiency of dopamine receptors. We continue to swipe up, even before the video is done.
This is a common scene among TikTok users. Multiple stimulants, and yet we still can’t focus long enough to finish the video. We scroll on and on for hours, and when that isn’t enough, there are plenty of other apps to choose from.
This short-form content is the primary way people nowadays consume media, and as such, their attention spans have shifted to accommodate it. Why watch a 40-minute YouTube video when a TikTok can explain it in 10 seconds? This logic is what has kept us so hooked on the popular social media app.
This may not seem like a big deal since you’re still getting the same information, but the consequences of our shortened attention spans have affected more than just how we choose to spend our online time. Teachers have begun to notice a difference in their students and how it is becoming more and more difficult for them to effectively engage with academic content and their schoolwork because they’d rather skim than understand what is being presented to them. This, among other things, has resulted in lower memory retention, and thus, students can’t properly learn anything.
Additionally, the increase in short-form content and the rise of social media have resulted in worse mental health for today’s adolescents. It is easy for someone to get wrapped up in their algorithm and constantly compare themselves to those they see online. If someone were to watch 10 videos in three minutes that all showed teenagers going out and having huge groups of friends, their brain would start telling them they are inadequate for not falling into what social media considers “normal.”
This constant comparison has built a lonely and individualistic society. We present ourselves online as the happiest people in the world, along with every other person in our feed, while struggling in the comfort of our own personal bubbles.
Social media, although originally intended for social connections, has created the steel bars that confine us into constant solitude, and yet we continue to scroll because our brains love that little bit of dopamine. We are conditioned to love quick, easy videos, but the more we watch, the more we establish comparison as the standard, and it will only get worse with time.
In addition to issues with school and self-esteem, the rise in short-form content has also caused an increase in fast fashion. Since short-form content allows users to absorb a lot of information in a short amount of time, creators are forced to keep up with whatever is new and popular in a moment to remain relevant.
As such, trends circulate faster and faster, everything and anything can turn into a microtrend. Viewers who want to dress like their favorite influencers are constantly scrambling to buy the popular top of the week or get the right shoes before everyone moves on to another pair.
While an influencer can afford to buy high-quality clothing on short notice, the average TikTok user must rely on websites like Shein that create cheap and low-quality items that resemble popular pieces. Once the trend fades away, those clothes are thrown away and end up in the very landfills that are killing the world’s marine life, taking hundreds of years to decompose.
The production of these items is also a key culprit in carbon emissions. The United Nations reports that fast fashion is responsible for 2% to 8% of global emissions, and this number continues to rise each year. When we should be working together to fight climate change, we’re too focused on following as many trends as possible to remain in line with what social media is telling us we should be wearing.
The way we consume media is integral to how we view the world and how we choose to live our lives. Short-form content is the primary culprit in our shortened attention spans, and because of this, we have weaker self-esteem and fly through fashion trends at a rate that the Earth can’t keep up with. These adverse effects have only continued to flourish and are beginning to set the foundations for what future generations are going to have to deal with.
TikTok, much to the chagrin of certain world leaders, isn’t going anywhere, and the only way we can fix anything is if we all work together to fix our declining attention spans or otherwise face the consequences of a tragic dopamine dependency.
