Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

psycnet.apa.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 213 posts

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#111

Post by imiric »

or_am_i wrote: post #64
nverba wrote: post #26

As someone who pays for YouTube, I don't understand why I can't disable shorts fully. They already have my money. What more do they want?

The subscription revenues is a decent chunk of your lifetime value (LTV) as a customer, but it's not all of it. The goal here is to squeeze as much value from you aside from that as possible, measured mostly by two things, really: the direct ad revenue, measured by dollars that go on the balance sheet, and the indirect "engagement" value measured by the KPIs (think daily, weekly, monthly active users) that go into th…

That's right, but it's not just products that they can "sell" you. It's all about your data, which is worth much more than any upsell opportunity.

Whether the user pays for YouTube Premium or not, they still have access to your behavioral data, your interests, they can easily determine your location, and so on. All of these data points contribute to your profile, which is a literal gold mine for their entire business. How much value they extract from it exactly is likely something not even Google knows. But given that it can be exchanged on dark data broker markets in perpetuity, the price can only go up.

It's a goddamn racket that needs to be made visible and subject to thorough public and legal scrutiny.

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#112

Post by chickensong »

squigz wrote: post #86
GloamingNiblets wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nature of the content is an important variable to control for in future work, but the primary negative impact appears to be via the devastating effect on human attention. From the paper: "repeated exposure to highly stimulating, fast-paced content may contribute to habituation, in which users become desensitized to slower, more effortful cognitive tasks such as reading, problem solving, or deep learning. This pro…

Is all short form video "highly stimulating" and/or "fast-paced" though? I can see the argument for the format being inherently stimulating/fast-paced, but I think that it still comes down more to the content than the format.

The pace is the format. Even if you're just watching turtles for 30 seconds, the loop and the switch to next video are fast-paced context switching, which is stimulating. I suspect it has similar mental effects to constant interruptions, like a bad day at work where slack and email prevent you from getting into flow state/real work.

The format also encourages maximum aggressive video editing where the short video is further chopped up with cuts and zooms etc, techniques designed to tickle your brain and keep you engaged, more stimulation.

Look at what twitter et al. did to long form reading. Short video is the same.

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#113

Post by Aurornis »

jancsika wrote: post #79
SirHumphrey wrote: post #56

I would caution against reading too much at this stage, even though the researchers were very careful to talk about only correlation, a lot of people here seem to read causation. This are population studies so the variables are not independent. The argument became a bit unpopular because it has been (ab)used by smoking companies and gambling establishments but while an addictive substance can addict anybody, who gets…

> This I only write because people sometimes get in to an obsessive social media cutting frenzy spending effort that would improve their lives much quicker spent fixing diet or exercise. Not cutting social media would make these difficult-- e.g., limiting exercise to just stationary machines where they can watch Tiktok and reach their dopamine hit goals for the day.

> Not cutting social media would make these difficult-- e.g., limiting exercise to just stationary machines where they can watch Tiktok and reach their dopamine hit goals for the day.

If you force exercise to be boring, people will just avoid it more.

People can scroll their phones or watch YouTube on an exercise bike. It might make them exercise longer and make them more likely to go to the gym than to avoid it.

I knew someone who only allowed themself to scroll their social media platform of choice while working out. The result? A lot of time spent working out.

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#114

Post by chickensong »

ge96 wrote: post #2

yeah I'm trying to watch less YT, hard for me to just sit in silence and think trying to be more of a producer than consumer, not saying this to look down I'm socially/financially a failure, trying to change my habits

> hard for me to just sit in silence and think

Maybe practice slowing down by reading a book. Any book, hard copy.

> trying to be more of a producer than consumer

Thank you!

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#115

Post by Aurornis »

imiric wrote: post #111
or_am_i wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subscription revenues is a decent chunk of your lifetime value (LTV) as a customer, but it's not all of it. The goal here is to squeeze as much value from you aside from that as possible, measured mostly by two things, really: the direct ad revenue, measured by dollars that go on the balance sheet, and the indirect "engagement" value measured by the KPIs (think daily, weekly, monthly active users) that go into th…

That's right, but it's not just products that they can "sell" you. It's all about your data, which is worth much more than any upsell opportunity. Whether the user pays for YouTube Premium or not, they still have access to your behavioral data, your interests, they can easily determine your location, and so on. All of these data points contribute to your profile, which is a literal gold mine for their entire business…

> How much value they extract from it exactly is likely something not even Google knows. But given that it can be exchanged on dark data broker markets in perpetuity,

Companies like Google and Meta don't sell your data, on dark markets or otherwise.

They keep it in-house for advertising targeting purposes.

If they sold it to other companies it would reduce their competitive advantage. It's not even worth it for them.

Google doesn't want to sell your data. They want to keep it internal as much as possible so their ad platform is valuable.

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#116

Post by Chabsff »

righthand wrote: post #100
Chabsff wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a HUGE difference in that the combined short length with the fact that the video starts playing before you even have a chance to make a decision on whether to watch it or not leads you to a "heh! I'm here already, might as well just watch the thing".

This is a response to you and the other Y people that confuse short videos with autoplay and user engagement techniques. There are people that autoplay long videos, in fact people stream random Simpson’s (or other favorite tv show, podcast, music, books on tape, etc) episodes in the background while they work. Classic TV has autoplay with no opportunity to decide. Autoplay is not an exclusive short form video feature…

There's no confusion here. It's pretty easy to make the argument that the combination of auto play and short form is orders of magnitude more problematic than the sum of their parts.

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#117

Post by bitmasher9 »

Aurornis wrote: post #115
imiric wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's right, but it's not just products that they can "sell" you. It's all about your data, which is worth much more than any upsell opportunity. Whether the user pays for YouTube Premium or not, they still have access to your behavioral data, your interests, they can easily determine your location, and so on. All of these data points contribute to your profile, which is a literal gold mine for their entire business…

> How much value they extract from it exactly is likely something not even Google knows. But given that it can be exchanged on dark data broker markets in perpetuity, Companies like Google and Meta don't sell your data, on dark markets or otherwise. They keep it in-house for advertising targeting purposes. If they sold it to other companies it would reduce their competitive advantage. It's not even worth it for them.…

They won’t sell your raw data, but they will use your data to charge a premium for their ads.

It’s indirectly “selling your data”.

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#118

Post by westbywest »

The "Vintage Space" channel host Amy Shira Teitel recently posted this long form video expressing her frustration with YT so heavily incentivizing SFVs with its creators. She goes into considerable detail about the intentionally addictive nature of the format, and how it clashes with her own publishing process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FRHHD3F2gM

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#119

Post by xzjis »

I have a theory: just like with excessive porn consumption, could it be that depressed people tend to watch more short-form videos? I have a chronically depressed friend who confirms this theory: she can't be bothered to do anything and can only muster the energy to watch Shorts when she's feeling down. Shorts are not the cause, but a symptom of the consequences of her depression.

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#120

Post by sothatsit »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #107
nverba wrote: post #26

As someone who pays for YouTube, I don't understand why I can't disable shorts fully. They already have my money. What more do they want?

Sadly this requires a browser plugin. Happily, those exist. I also pay for YT and use "enhancer for youtube" which can do a plethora of things, one of which is to disable shorts.

I use the Unhook extension, which is also very good.
Post reply on HN