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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

#141

Post by valar_m »

swatcoder wrote: post #133
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 w…

Why would a user who hates shorts so much that they want to disable them in the app be sharing links to shorts with their friends?

If a paying user want to disable shorts, wouldn't allowing that ability make it more likely they will continue to pay?

The reason I started paying for Youtube premium was to turn off the ads. I hate YT shorts and I get annoyed when I accidentally open one. If YT continues to shove shorts down our throats, I'll probably cancel my subscription because I hate shorts that much.

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

#142

Post by the_gipsy »

derefr wrote: post #33
baxtr wrote: post #10

We have one clear rule at home for the kids: YouTube long format is ok. But: no shorts, no reels, no TikTok. Any short video platform is strictly forbidden. No exceptions.

I would suggest you make an exception for YouTube shorts from channels / creators that also put out YouTube long-form content. You'd think I'd be making a point here about "otherwise you'd be missing a lot of good educational content that happens to be packaged short-form"; but no! The point I actually want to make is much weirder: unlike the other short-form-video services, YouTube's "shorts" don't seem to have any…

The question is: why are you still on this treadmill?

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

#143

Post by valar_m »

cj wrote: post #138
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).

But users like me who hate shorts so much that they want to disable them in the app aren't addicted to shorts because we refuse to open them. And there's no risk of me going to Tiktok or reels because I hate short-form video.

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

#144

Post by Agraillo »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #76
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?

I wonder what the issue is with shorts? Usually if I look something up on youtube (say a how-to or a product review), I don't want to see a half hour of blithering that could be compressed to a tweet. I generally pick the shortest video I can find about whatever it is. If it's limited to under a minute that's great. I'd really rather have a text post than a video, but those don't seem to exist any more.

Your comment made me see that there are two kinds of "shorts." The best analogy is print magazines. The one you prefer is like when someone tells you that Byte has a short review of a new device - you go to a library, find the issue, and look up the info. TikTok and YouTube Shorts are like glossy magazines often available in waiting rooms, these can be read (or rather consumed) from any page to any page until you're next in the queue. The mere existence and success of such glossy magazines means there will always be demand for this kind of consumption, this time just on another medium.

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

#145

Post by chickensong »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #131
chickensong wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 microtransactio…

Yep, the internet as a whole and is the real culprit. We love instant gratification and short feedback loops and the internet provides.

I feel like things will likely get worse before it gets better, but I have long-term hopes that eventually we'll see some cultural change that promotes doing vs consuming.

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

#146

Post by nearbuy »

lenerdenator wrote: post #92
nearbuy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't make more money from showing you shorts once you've paid to remove the ads. The default reason some feature doesn't exist is simply because no one bothered to make it. Maybe they don't think there's a big demand from their users to disable shorts completely.

> The default reason some feature doesn't exist is simply because no one bothered to make it. Maybe they don't think there's a big demand from their users to disable shorts completely. My guess is they know exactly what users are doing with the app and website, and know that people use shorts more often than we think. This is one of their prime products, and they're Google, the biggest surveillance company on the pla…

Yes, as you say, maybe there isn't a big demand to disable shorts completely.

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

#147

Post by swatcoder »

valar_m wrote: post #141
swatcoder wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Why would a user who hates shorts so much that they want to disable them in the app be sharing links to shorts with their friends? If a paying user want to disable shorts, wouldn't allowing that ability make it more likely they will continue to pay? The reason I started paying for Youtube premium was to turn off the ads. I hate YT shorts and I get annoyed when I accidentally open one. If YT continues to shove shorts…

> Why would a user who hates shorts so much that they want to disable them in the app be sharing links to shorts with their friends?

Because the user thinsk it's a funny penguin and that their friend will laugh. The reality is that for almost all users, the demonstrated and disturbing reality is that they will engage with what you put in front of them if you can tune it right. They may wish you didn't do so, and may idly lament to people about how much they resent you for not giving them more control, but they still engage, and in cases like yours, still subscribe. They're that attached (addicted) and therefore that valuable.

> If YT continues to shove shorts down our throats, I'll probably cancel my subscription because I hate shorts that much.

What modern online media companies learned is that they really don't have to care about that. Individually, you and your subsription don't matter to them at all, and most people just don't get indignant enough to storm off over stuff like that as long you you put the right funny penguins and half-naked women in front of them, so it all works at scale regardless.

And if you were to cancel your subscription, are you ready to go so far as to give up the platform entirely, or would you just fallback to being an ad target who's demonstrated all the appealing targeting characteristics you already have, while still being fed shorts?

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

#148

Post by insin »

If you want to hide Shorts completely on YouTube, or make watching them a more intentional act by hijacking YouTube's navigation to make them display in the regular video player, Control Panel for YouTube [^0] has options for that, as well as for removing any other sources of algorithmic/recommended videos you don't want, including the new "More videos" in the new video UI (which you can also disable if you don't like it)

[^0] https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube

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

#149

Post by nearbuy »

gryfft wrote: post #135
nearbuy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's possible that particular user, despite not wanting the shorts, will keep paying for YouTube for longer because they enjoy shorts. It's also possible that they genuinely don't like them and are less likely to keep paying because of them. People are different. What keeps some customers engaged can turn off others.

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

#150

Post by bogdanos »

xzjis wrote: post #119

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.

Yes, but consuming and getting addicted to (porn|SFV) might as well induce some apathy and later to depression. In my experience (which is NOT a statistics study) the problems go in spiral.
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