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Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

psycnet.apa.org

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

#161

Post by SlightlyLeftPad »

mrandish wrote: post #60
SlightlyLeftPad wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate that I can’t use youtube at all without being forced to fed short form video content. Or kids schools referencing youtube content for educational purposes and they are then force fed short form video content.

On Firefox you can block short form content from YouTube as easily as adding one extension or a few uBlock Origin filter lines. With a bit more work it's possible to fix a lot of other stuff using various browser extensions and userscripts on desktop/laptop. On mobile (Android) I use an app that patches the YT executable called "Revanced Extended" ( https://github.com/inotia00/ReVanced_Extended ). On set top (Android…

I appreciate the knowledge share. Fixing it for me is one thing, I can be relatively disciplined to watch how I spend my time on it. The huge issue for me is that it’s on every kids device. It’s super predatory and these companies know the damage they’re causing children at this point.

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

#162

Post by amarshall »

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…

Non-Shorts can be vertical as well. It works fine, and without the swipe-encouraging UX. If they were “just making long/medium-form videos in portrait now” they don’t need YT Shorts to do that.

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

#163

Post by theshackleford »

pohuing wrote: post #140
theshackleford wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You don’t get ads with the premium subscription. Have I misunderstood the intent of this correction?

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

#164

Post by econ »

theshackleford wrote: post #163
pohuing wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They mean the premium subscription, not channel subscriptions.

You don’t get ads with the premium subscription. Have I misunderstood the intent of this correction?

They also own the ad slots everywhere else.

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

#165

Post by HeinzStuckeIt »

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.

I have taken three multihour Flixbus journeys in Central Europe this year. Each time, what astounded me was how every woman under 30 in sight from my seat was watching Tiktok for the entire journey. Just one thirty-second clip after another for four or five hours, and apparently mainly content that, even if it is about something else, serves to flog cosmetics brands.

Obviously it’s hard to diagnose depression from merely looking at someone. But none of these Tiktok users seemed like sad sacks, indeed some looked like successful professionals. I could only conclude that there is some truth to this platform hijacking even well-balanced people’s brain.

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

#166

Post by loloquwowndueo »

HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #151
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

YouTube can be used in a healthy way: use NewPipe and subscribe to channels with edifying content and then, when a new video appears that you would want to watch properly, send the direct video link to yt-dlp on your computer. You then avoid the actual website, its algorithm, and its enshittification like short-form videos. Choosing edifying content requires, of course, some caution. Avoid individual “content creator…

Oh sure - or, just realize that 99% of content is absolute garbage and go use your time in something else entirely. It’s what I do - I understand if others choose to do differently with their time and resources.

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

#167

Post by hedora »

FloorEgg wrote: post #121
bitmasher9 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

Its monetizing the data. Selling the data (directly or indirectly) is inaccurate.

Countless studies have shown how to extract personally identifiable information from Google’s monetization platform by giving them money.

They sell your data by any definition of “sell” that existed before they redefined the term so that it excludes their businesses.

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

#168

Post by hedora »

nearbuy wrote: post #68
1970-01-01 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want more of your money. They will monetize you as much as they can. You're just a well-supported, paying product.

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.

They use your data to target ads at you elsewhere on the internet, improve their analytics platforms and give it to oppressive regimes. It also often ends up at shady data brokers.

They make all sorts of money doing that, but they get upset when people say Google is “selling” the data.

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

#169

Post by j1elo »

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?

If YouTube was an independent company, which it'd be nice if it was, then by paying for it you'd be supporting YouTube (in case you decided it was worth it and they treated you nicely). But as it is, you're supporting Google, which is arguably an undesirable thing to do given how "evil" they've become. So a first course of action could be to close the tap and don't give them your money for a service that they've enshittified in the name of profit.

They could also make the experience out of the box like SponsorBlock and skip the sponsorship segments, but they don't do that either for their paying users.

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

#170

Post by danielvaughn »

I've gotten sucked into TikTok for the past couple of years, and I can really feel it. All social media is likely harmful to some degree, but TikTok is not like other social media. I've been online since the beginning of the web, and there's nothing else like it in terms of actively destroying your brain's ability to focus.

It's like the fentanyl of attention, the purest distillation of the state of mind we entered into when we mindlessly flipped through channels on TV.

If you use it enough, your brain starts to find it _very_ irritating to focus on anything for more than 5-10 seconds or so. I really can't describe how powerful of an effect it is. I don't know if the Chinese government intended to use it as some sort of covert weapon, but if they did then they're geniuses. It literally makes you stupid.

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