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Watching TikTok and Instagram deactivates the cognitive control network: Study

rathbiotaclan.com

111–120 of 132 posts

Re: Watching TikTok and Instagram deactivates the cognitive control network: Study

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additional citations: Zuckerberg Knew. A Whistleblower Has the Emails to Prove It. - https://www.gadgetreview.com/zuckerberg-knew-a-whistleblower... - August 19th, 2026 > Armed with engineering documents and internal emails, the states allege Meta built specific features — infinite scroll, autoplay, beauty filters, engagement-optimized recommendation systems — to maximize time-on-platform for young users, while alleg…

Did any of those links provide evidence that Instagram deliberately withholds likes? If not, it seems like a non-sequitur.

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Re: Watching TikTok and Instagram deactivates the cognitive control network: Study

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I watch a movie in 56 two minute clips while someone extrudes playdoh in the corner?

Plus those shorts are out of order. So it’s gotta take more effort to piece the plot back together, right? :)

Maybe this could even work better for non-chronological movies like Memento

Re: Watching TikTok and Instagram deactivates the cognitive control network: Study

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additional citations: Zuckerberg Knew. A Whistleblower Has the Emails to Prove It. - https://www.gadgetreview.com/zuckerberg-knew-a-whistleblower... - August 19th, 2026 > Armed with engineering documents and internal emails, the states allege Meta built specific features — infinite scroll, autoplay, beauty filters, engagement-optimized recommendation systems — to maximize time-on-platform for young users, while alleg…

Did any of those links provide evidence that Instagram deliberately withholds likes? If not, it seems like a non-sequitur.

Nope. They changed and edited the comment a lot to continue adding things, but nothing about the original claim. It looks like a combination of goalpost moving and link-bombing to change the subject.

Re: Watching TikTok and Instagram deactivates the cognitive control network: Study

#114
post #44

It used to be that reading books made you an intellectual. In the age of TikTok and shorts being able to watch a movie for 2 hours makes you an intellectual.

I’d posit that we just puritanically glorify anything perceived as difficult, regardless of the correlation with “intellect.” I’m fine not having the same attention span as people who had to less stuff to do hundreds of years ago.

People with long attention spans can still focus on things that take very little focus, like short-form videos. But people with short attention spans have a hard time focusing on things like books, or even movies. So having a long attention span opens up more intellectual avenues for you, without restricting any.

Yes, there's always some puritan attitudes involved in how we talk about this. But I do feel that people who can't read a book because of attention issues are missing out on something.

Re: Watching TikTok and Instagram deactivates the cognitive control network: Study

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I watch a movie in 56 two minute clips while someone extrudes playdoh in the corner?

Plus those shorts are out of order. So it’s gotta take more effort to piece the plot back together, right? :)

Exactly. It’s like making every movie Tenet. I have to actively watch and piece together the plot.

Re: Watching TikTok and Instagram deactivates the cognitive control network: Study

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are all reward hacking, but tiktok is audiovisual immersion, dating apps are romantic validation and twitter is outrage/information foraging

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16101310 (2018) > "Matt Mayberry, who works at a California startup called Dopamine Labs, says it's common knowledge in the industry that Instagram exploits this craving by strategically withholding "likes" from certain users. If the photo-sharing app decides you need to use the service more often, it'll show only a fraction of the likes you've received on a given post at first, h…

It might be anti-bot feature, i.e. verifying that those likes are not from bots. YT delays views counter update for similar reasons.

Re: Watching TikTok and Instagram deactivates the cognitive control network: Study

#117
post #53

I get the TikTok addiction, but before that it was fb, before that was the tv, before that the newspaper/magazines, before that the books, before that table games etc I don’t know it seems that regardless of the technology the brain needs dozing off from reality.

You read the newspapers, books, watch a movie: eventually there is an end and you have to do something else Also, books, TV, board games, newspapers didn’t disappear. So it’s compounded in some ways

Oh you have not played backgammon. You cannot imagine the sheer amount of man-hours we have invested as a species to moving checkers on a piece of wood.

Re: Watching TikTok and Instagram deactivates the cognitive control network: Study

#118
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was young, and it was like a fever dream. I couldn't believe that was on TV. It was pretty darn subversive.

Like other really good satire it keeps predicting things it wasn’t trying to. We’re living down to it.

> We’re living down to it.

Thank you for introducing me to this turn of phrase. I get the feeling that it will become more and more useful in the coming years.

Re: Watching TikTok and Instagram deactivates the cognitive control network: Study

#119
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that should be illegal. I don’t know how to legislate it in a way that makes sense and actually accomplishes the goal (or if that’s even possible), but I would support someone trying to figure it out.

Full social media ban, problem solved. There’s no point wasting more time discussing these things when they’re very obviously a large net negative on society.

> Full social media ban, problem solved.

I look forward to the legally mandated discontinuation of HN. /s

Re: Watching TikTok and Instagram deactivates the cognitive control network: Study

#120
I don’t know why no one talking about the importance of GABA and glutamate in the study. To me that’s the most fascinating and important part. They found that the children with higher GABA had a harder time switching off this circuit. GABA is essentially equal to sleepiness, depression, and fatigue. It’s the most widely used inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain.

And on the other side, we have glutamate, which is excitatory you can associate this with mania, insomnia, just generally higher energy. These kids were more able to stop the scrolling.

Both these neurotransmitters are going to be controlled a lot by a genetics, but also a lot by diet. GABA and glutamate enter convert into each other through glutamate decarboxylase and it needs vitamin B6, pyridoxine, to do this.

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