Most college students have heard their parents complain that young people are always on their phones.
It’s easy to dismiss this criticism as older generations being out of touch with modern trends and technology, but young people should take a minute to consider these concerns about internet overreliance before issuing an eye roll and a well-worn, “Ok, Boomer,” in response.
Social media and the internet are relatively new inventions, and empirical, peer-reviewed studies analyzing their effects on our psychology are in short supply. It may take years for reliable, long-term conclusions to solidify. However, in light of available science and firsthand experiences, it is clear that TikTok and other kinds of online entertainment and social media are slowly destroying our ability to focus.
For the rare uninitiated, TikTok is a video-sharing platform that found its niche in limiting posts to under a minute. In 2021, TikTok announced that it had reached an unfathomable one billion users every month. The app has recently expanded its video time limit to three and even ten minutes, but the tiny “bites” of content remain an iconic part of its public image.
Success breeds copycats and mimicry, and many apps and websites have followed in TikTok’s footsteps. YouTube Shorts and Instagram’s Suggested Reels mimic TikTok’s short-form content. These alongside Netflix Fast Laughs, Reddit Shorts and other mimicries present users with quick content bites in an endless or near-endless feed. Parent companies create algorithms to organize these feeds, refining them to maximize watch time and reward engagement.
In my experience, this format has led to a phenomenon I call the “social media death spiral.” I will scroll, sometimes for hours, through videos and posts that only mildly interest me. After a few seconds, the content will either capture my attention or bore me, and I can solve the latter problem with a single, easy swipe. The cycle repeats until I’ve wasted hours without finding much of actual significance.
These death spirals and the short-form content that enables them are fascinating. Though it might seem obvious to state, they effectively flood our minds with repetitive, brief bursts of information. Reading a book or watching a movie might afford us the same quantity of content, but those activities require a singular, sustained focus over time. The lucrative and engaging nature of TikTok is rooted in the fact that this kind of focus is never needed. It trains users to engage with content without commitment or prolonged attention, and this has a powerful influence on the way we think.
Returning to my own experience, I am both a user of these websites and a double major in English and history. Both majors require a genuinely ungodly amount of reading, as one would expect, and my consumption on these apps profoundly impacts my ability to keep up with it all. When I spend a lot of time on websites like TikTok, my ability to focus on course readings nose dives. I get distracted more easily, get bored more quickly and generally find it more difficult to stay on track with my academic obligations. Friends and peers I have spoken to on the subject have expressed similar sentiments, and many college students probably feel the same.
Of course, anecdotal evidence has minimal usefulness. That’s where science steps in.
A study published in 2018 in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that increased social media use “was associated with significantly higher odds of having symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.” These odds more than doubled in groups that scrolled with the greatest frequency. The study’s findings don’t point fingers at any particular website or application, but they remind us that our digital consumption can measurably impact our brains.
Another study published in 2019 in Nature Communications analyzed the collective attention spans of internet users over time. As a part of this study, the authors examined the average time a hashtag remains trending on Twitter. They discovered that this period is decreasing with each passing year. In other words, our attention spans have been shortening in measurable degrees.
Finally, a third study published by Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking analyzed a similar digital phenomenon in 2007. It discovered that the time young people spent using instant messaging applications was “significantly related to higher ratings of distractibility for academic tasks.” Though social media and instant messaging are different, this study shines an important light on the ability of online activities to increase distractibility in students.
If digital media can impact the way we think, then the TikTok format exploding in popularity is perfectly suited for the task. Its continuous salvo of content bites demands nothing of our attention spans and actively rewards the restless mind with newer, more relevant videos. This doesn’t make the application inherently harmful, but it means that an excess of use could damage students’ potential.
Despite all this, we shouldn’t abandon TikTok and other social media entirely. Instead, users should take the time to examine their digital habits with a critical eye. After all, if a slight change in screen time could make you a more focused, successful student, why wouldn’t you make that change?
Noah McKinney is an English and history junior from Houston, TX.
