Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by nxor » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 9:29 PM UTC

goldemerald wrote: post #8

Algorithmically served short form videos is clearly the smoking of our time. I cannot stand the conservative view of "well we don't know the videos cause mental health decline, or if it's simply those with a genetic inclination who seek out short form content.", exactly mirroring the skeptics about smoking causing cancer. I'm hopeful that in 5-10 years (but more likely 20) people will view this AI served, maximally e…

I hope you don't mean conservative in the usual political sense. I know more conservatives worried about this than not.

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

#62

Post by nemonemo » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 9:30 PM UTC

SunshineTheCat wrote: post #41

I find it weird that this focuses specifically upon "short form video" as though that's the dangerous or addictive element. It's like saying drinking consistently throughout the day is dangerous without specifying whether we're talking about bourbon or water. That key variable seems to matter more than the format. For example: how do you think a person would feel if they watched 30 minutes straight of "short form vid…

The danger of short form videos is because the form enables the algorithm designer to artificially maximize the reward with minimum effort by the viewer. It doesn't matter whether you watch kitten ones initially. After watching it for a month casually, chances are you would end up watching some addictive videos for hours with little effort. It could be some endless stream of Buddhist monks talking about suffering, if someone likes that kind of thing. It's just designed to be addictive with crazy high reward/effort ratio.

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

#63

Post by w10-1 » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 9:31 PM UTC

SunshineTheCat wrote: post #41

I find it weird that this focuses specifically upon "short form video" as though that's the dangerous or addictive element. It's like saying drinking consistently throughout the day is dangerous without specifying whether we're talking about bourbon or water. That key variable seems to matter more than the format. For example: how do you think a person would feel if they watched 30 minutes straight of "short form vid…

It may be that some media or some alcohol is more toxic than others, but it's still fair to test whether the mode of administration has an independent or enhancing effect.

E.g., crack cocaine is more addictive than nasal, and extended release Adderall is less addictive the immediate-release. So there's good reason to hypothesize that SFV has similar addiction-enhancing effects over long-form, and the article meta-analysis says problems in inhibition and cognition are among the strongest.

wrt choice, the thing about addiction is that while becoming addicted results from a series of choices, being addicted impairs your choice-making executive functions. Addicts use even when they don't like it, and to the exclusion of other things they prefer, and often switch from expensive drugs to cheap ones just to maximize use.

So in the same way that society would prefer to prevent rather than treat legions of fentanyl addicts infecting cities or meth addicts roaming the countryside, society would like to avoid the cognitive decline and productivity loss of a generation lost to scrolling.

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

#64

Post by or_am_i » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 9:31 PM UTC

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 the quarterlies. The more time you spend on the platform, the more "things" you have got used to interacting with (aka day-to-day, week-to-week "retention"), the more they can potentially "sell" to you -- and it's not just ads / youtube subscription upsells, it can be and often is other "products" on the same platform: their music streaming, their search, their documents and emails, maps, drive, etc. etc. And it just so happens that the short format is _really, really_ engaging for many folks.

The more time you spend in the mall, the fuller are the bags on the way out, be it out of chance, habit, or convenience.

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

#65

Post by the_af » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 9:31 PM UTC

pcthrowaway wrote: post #27

the_af wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if that's the only discernible difference. While 3 minutes is indeed an arbitrary limit, the difference between short and long form videos is very noticeable. Long form requires another form of attention, focusing more, more commitment, less distraction; there's even a form of "delayed gratification" (a form of attention that only grownups can provide) in that the payoff isn't always immediate and can so…

I probably spend 1-2 hours per day watching content on youtube (and much of that is at ~1.5-1.75X speed) I don't know what qualifies as "addiction", but it is typically where I get my news, where a web-series I watch is released, and where I learn about social justice issues important to me, through video essays. I'm sure my consumption is very different from that of someone who watches 100 1-minute Tiktok videos per…

Are your habits typical though? Playing long form videos at 1.75 speed? I suppose once you start engaging at hyperspeeds, you're making it closer to short form compulsive consumption. It'd be like speed reading a book instead of letting ideas and thoughts form.

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

#66

Post by npunt » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 9:31 PM UTC

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?

They want you to never unsubscribe, which requires your addiction.

Incentive to addict + Ability to addict = outcome

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

#67

Post by ModernMech » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 9:32 PM UTC

My wife is bipolar 1, and whenever she would go into a manic phase, I noticed her attention span would diminish as her condition worsened. First she couldn't tolerate a whole movie. Then not a 40 minute TV show, then not even a 20 minute show. She would go through a music video phase where she would watch those on repeat for hours, but eventually even those become too long, so the last stop was YouTube shorts when her mental health was at its worse. I always knew she was getting better when she started watching longer-form content.

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

#68

Post by nearbuy » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 9:32 PM UTC

1970-01-01 wrote: post #36

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?

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.

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

#69

Post by nxor » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 9:32 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #15

foofoo12 wrote: post #7

Totally my feeling too. The formula seems to be: dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, infuriating country dividing content, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, infuriating country dividing content, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine ...

Whenever I search anything in my native language, and I mean literally any topic, one of the top recommendations (if not the top one, which autoplays by default) is the local far-right party. It's crazy. We've become used to this but it's crazy.

People have beliefs you don't share?

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

#70

Post by hodgehog11 » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 9:34 PM UTC

I think it really is important to stress that these are correlations only. Something I've noticed: those with poor attention spans or generally low engagement with deeper material tend to be attracted to SFV. Likewise, those in a state of depression or have ADHD can easily get into the quick satisfaction coming from SFV. It may exacerbate existing issues, but not necessarily be the cause.