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Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

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

#131

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

chickensong wrote: post #112
squigz wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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've been over-indulging in context switching long before short-form videos ever showed up. The internet itself is all about context switching. But the UX around short-form videos definitely encourages doomscrolling, similar to how microtransaction games encourage neverending grinds.

We definitely need better habits as a collective, but I think a list of "do's" is just as important as a whack-a-mole list of "don'ts".

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

#133

Post by swatcoder »

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?

By being a paying subscriber, you've indicated:

* that you grow attached to video content if they can get in front of you

* that you have disposable income

* that you're willing to spend disposable income on video content and probably other things

* that people associated with you, those you network with on their system and those you share content with via links, are more likely to share one or more of these traits with you, compared to people they know nothing about

By paying them, you've inherently invited them to try to squeeze more value from you and betrayed that your own social network probably includes many similarly ripe marks for subscription sales or effective ads.

So pushing the content they think best represents their future income streams, in hopes that you eventually grow attached to it, or at least occassionally share it with your network of ripe marks, is of course going to be their strategy.

In the modern marketplace, subscriptions don't buy you out of ads or capitalist annoyances, they just suggest that you're an even more valuable target for sales and marketing than those who haven't.

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

#134

Post by chickensong »

derefr wrote: post #105
chickensong wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're anti-shorts, you could also choose to send a message to the creators by not watching their shorts. If they previously made long form but have switched to shorts, they're concerned with views, so you deny them the views. Of course this may have little impact since so many people have no self-control and the gains from shorts may outweigh loosing your views, but it's still something. Enjoy the warmth of angry…

I mean... I'm against short-form videos . I'm not against YT shorts, because they (mostly) aren't short-form videos. They're just vertical videos that trick people used to short-form videos into thinking they'll be getting short-form videos, but (mostly) give them long-form videos. (Or... medium form? What do you call a two-to-three-minute-long video that thoroughly answers one very specific question?) Especially the…

I hear what you're saying, but YT shorts are literally short-form videos. I guess if your scale of short/long all fits within 3 minutes, then a 2 min video could be considered "long", but we're talking about 3 mins or less vs much longer.

Kudos to your training of the algorithm if scrolling shorts gives you nothing but interesting informational bits, but you're still supporting the short-form format, which leads to more short-form videos. Like you said, YT is pushing and creators are incentivized, so our clicks make the graphs go up and accelerate our march into ADHD doom scrolling dystopia.

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

#135

Post by gryfft »

nearbuy wrote: post #85
prussia wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would wager some VP at YouTube in charge of shorts has their performance evaluations tied to how many hours of shorts are watched. So that's one incentive. Another is customer retention. Make current paying users addicted to shorts, and maybe they'll be more likely to keep paying.

I think you're basically right, but the comment I replied to was saying they'll somehow get more of that specific user's money. While the shorts may improve retention in aggregate, this particular paying customer doesn't want them.

What you want and what behaviors you may be induced toward via a nonstop campaign of unwanted UX changes are two different things.

When a pusher gives you some free drugs, they are not taking into account whether you want to be addicted to drugs. Not part of the business model.

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

#136

Post by loloquwowndueo »

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 best thing you can do is stop paying and wean yourself off YouTube. It’s terrible for your mental health.

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

#138

Post by cj »

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?

People are less likely to quit buying something when they’re addicted to it.

Google wants you to be addicted to YouTube. It makes you more likely to renew.

And it helps keep you off competing platforms (TikTok, reels, etc).

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

#139

Post by righthand »

Chabsff wrote: post #116
righthand wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes but then we’re not talking about short form video being addictive but rather the hunt for a good short form video is addictive. This same idea can be applied to long form and any other medium you enjoy, finish, and immediately want more of. Now if you have only 30 mins before your next task to watch a long form video then you may skip starting the video, but that doesn’t mean there is anything inherently bad about short form video but rather the tools for viewing it. So yes you are confusing and you’re intentionally confusing the two so that your point stands about short form video, but it doesn’t because your points are about the viewing tools.

If you continue to push this point, people will only think that short videos under 3 minutes are some how the devil and TikTok et al will continue on making whatever length of video is next in line, more addictive.

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

#140

Post by pohuing »

theshackleford wrote: post #95
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…

> 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 There are no ads on a sub, this doesn’t make any sense as such to the parents comment.

They mean the premium subscription, not channel subscriptions.
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