“You’re rotting your brain” is what my mother would tell me in high school when I would sit on my phone and scroll endlessly. At the time, I brushed her off, claiming she wouldn’t understand because she’s a different generation and didn’t grow up with cell phones. Years later, I see that she was right.
Gen Z has a habit of ‘doomscrolling’ or ‘rotting’ with TikTok or Instagram Reels. It’s pretty common to wake up in the morning and immediately start scrolling. While it is fun to see different types of content quickly, short-form content is more dangerous than you think.
According to a blog by Harmony, Gen Z spends an average of 6 hours and 27 minutes on their phones per day. That’s over a quarter of your day spent on just your phone. Six hours per day for a year is over 2000 hours. That’s a lot of your time. If that doesn’t alarm you, then I don’t know what will.
Short-form content affects the following areas: (1) attention span, (2) mental health, (3) dopamine and reward systems, and (4) memory.
- There has been a decline in human attention spans, with the average now being 8.25 seconds. This is shorter than a goldfish’s attention span! Short-form content plays a part in the lower attention span due to the fact that if you don’t find a video interesting within the first few seconds, you’re going to scroll to the next one.
- Short-form video addiction is linked to poorer sleep quality and increased social anxiety. Dr. Zinchuk of Yale Medicine finds that poor sleep negatively affects decision-making and emotions. This means it takes longer for us to make decisions, and makes us more irritable. Additionally, poor sleep can lead to depression and anxiety.
- The ventral tegmental area of the brain-–responsible for dopamine release-–is activated when viewing short-form content. Social media users will scroll past boring videos until they find one that gives them a release of dopamine. This habit changes your reward system, requiring more dopamine to feel the same kind of satisfaction in the real world as you do from a TikTok video. This can cause events in real life to not be as exciting as they once were to you.
- A study by Chiossi et al found that using short-form content was significantly detrimental to prospective memory performance. Prospective memory is the ability to recall an intention to do something in the future. Short-form content damages this and causes us to be more forgetful.
In conclusion, short-form content like TikTok and Instagram Reels is damaging to you. While you might not care right now, you will care one day, when you realize you’ve wasted years of your life chasing dopamine hits on a screen instead of experiencing life.
If you want to start cutting down your screen time, you could use an app like Screen Zen (not sponsored). I use this myself and set a limit from 8 AM to 8 PM on Instagram. I’ve been doing this for almost three weeks, and I’ve already noticed a difference. It’s incredible how less stressed I feel now, and how much more time I have in a day. I feel inclined to spend time on my hobbies now, and even feel passion for life again. It’s hard to stop an addiction, so I still give myself time to scroll on the weekends. But usually, if I want entertainment, I turn to a YouTube video or a book now, which I count as progress. I even watch YouTube videos about short form content addiction and its damages, which inspired me to write this article. I recommend doing your own research on the topic.
You’re not completely at fault for your addiction. Social media companies use algorithms to curate personalized content feeds for you, keeping you hooked. But you can put in the work to curb your addiction and better yourself. Start small! One idea is to set a hard screen time limit on TikTok or Instagram. Another idea is not allowing yourself to access your phone one hour after waking up and one hour before bed. These changes might be difficult at first, but the risk is worth the reward.