The thing that really irks me is the explosion of short-form video is paired with deemphasizing links to try and keep people from leaving the site, which means even if you want to just ignore the video content and still use social media as a way to find interesting things to read/look at on the internet it's becoming progressively more difficult.
Agreed 100% with this article, and I don't think you're just someone complaining about change. It's pretty clear that these short-form videos are basically junk food on the internet. What I don't know is how we ever go back. It would require a huge number of people to consciously choose to not get sucked in.
Yeah I've made the conscious effort to be less on my phone. Deleted a lot of social media stuff and the ones I still have, I turned off notifications so I don't get those constant chirps to "pay attention to meee".
I feel I'm better off for it but it required the self awareness to realize this was bad and well, I was never into short form to begin with. If you're a youth, this is all you've ever known and too many adults aren't self aware to see the negative effects so I expect this to not get better.
Rewatching "The Simpsons", there's a lot of cracks at TV for lowering attention spans. Were they right or just being alarmist? I don't know maybe it was but it couldn't do it nearly as bad as internet short form could. For as much Tv as my brother watched (our parents thought it was a big problem), eventually the show would end, something you didn't like would come on and you wanted to do something else, and the culture at the time socially punished you for not going out and interacting with people at all. You'd be called a weirdo or freak for staying in all day looking at the idiot box. Now people will talk about how they *shouldn't* be expected to want to leave the house because of anxiety, which they probably got because they refuse to use their social muscles.
Not to say anxiety doesn't exist but for these folk, it's definitely because they have no offline social lives.
Oddly I find that watching a full TV episode actually *restores* my attention nowadays. Paying attention to a single thing for 20 minutes is actually helpful...
“Even Substack - which sometimes acts as though it’s the anti-social media form of social media”
Substack auto opens on their twitter clone. And you gotta be real careful when clicking to avoid that Reels clone button. I’m adept at avoiding these now, but I’m a paying customer of this app? Why do I have to wade through social media slop? And it’s infectious. It makes the writing more slop-focused. Sucks to see it enshittified so quickly.
I hate shorts so much that i hacked my phone so the YouTube app won't show them to me. The fact that's not an option YouTube presents is borderline criminal.
one of the more notable things about the TikTok ban is that the fact that it's owned by the Chinese government is only half the problem -- the other half of the problem is that the short-form video style invariably makes people stupider.
People getting *the news* from TikTok is a big problem, and even if you don't assume that it harms Democrats, it definitely changes who the Democrats are -- Democratic voters are currently mad at the party for what are extremely dumb reasons, and people like David Hogg are essentially telling Democrats that to appeal to young voters they have to be a lot stupider.
I highly recommend you read the book "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman. Though it was published in 1985, during the heyday of television, the book's thesis is deeply applicable to what you've written here. Neil Postman would be rolling in his grave if he knew just how dominant social media and short form video were in our modern society.
This brilliantly captures something Iabout the current state of the internet. The carcinization metaphor is perfect - there’s something almost inevitable about how every platform has evolved toward the same addictive format, regardless of what they originally were.
What particularly resonates is the about market failure and negative externalities. The fact that short-form video “wins” in terms of engagement doesn’t mean it’s actually providing value - it’s just more effective at hijacking our attention systems. It’s like how sugar outcompetes vegetables in taste tests, but that doesn’t make it better nutrition.
The medium is reshaping not just how we consume content, but what gets created in the first place.
I don’t have solutions either, but awareness really does feel like the first step. At minimum, we can try to be more intentional about our consumption and recognize that these interactions are relationship based….if this content was coming directly from a human, would we engage it in the same way? Would it feel valuable to us? If not, why does it feel so via digital platforms?
I jumped on TikTok for a span of about two weeks a few years ago, and deleted it and never went back. I could literally feel it corroding my attention span. The algorithm there was, in my estimation, the best (in terms of delivering content I wanted to see) of any short form video app, and it was entirely too easy to reach for it whenever I had 30 spare seconds. It had to go.
It's gonna be fine. Humans consume and create. Right now we're in a consumption spike due to the technology in front of us.
But life rides a sine wave. There's little doubt that evolving dynamics will push the culture back to production - it's just as exhilarating when people feel empowered to create.
One thing that’s annoying is you don’t have control over whether it’s shown or not. It’s simply in your feed and sometimes draws you in, which also kind of suggests the companies know people would otherwise turn it off and not see the content.
I guess this can be a new target for European legislation one way or the other and then it’ll be possible to see if people enjoy short videos and will seek them out or are simply happy with them gone.
A friend just sent me this incredible video from 12 years ago - a PSA about 'Vertical Video Syndrome'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dechvhb0Meo
pre-Vine, posting a vertical video was considered a major faux pas! People would yell at you in the comments! Turn the phone!
I remember watching "Tosh.0" (back in like, what '09/'10?) and he was making fun of people who don't turn their phone!
The thing that really irks me is the explosion of short-form video is paired with deemphasizing links to try and keep people from leaving the site, which means even if you want to just ignore the video content and still use social media as a way to find interesting things to read/look at on the internet it's becoming progressively more difficult.
Agreed 100% with this article, and I don't think you're just someone complaining about change. It's pretty clear that these short-form videos are basically junk food on the internet. What I don't know is how we ever go back. It would require a huge number of people to consciously choose to not get sucked in.
Yeah I've made the conscious effort to be less on my phone. Deleted a lot of social media stuff and the ones I still have, I turned off notifications so I don't get those constant chirps to "pay attention to meee".
I feel I'm better off for it but it required the self awareness to realize this was bad and well, I was never into short form to begin with. If you're a youth, this is all you've ever known and too many adults aren't self aware to see the negative effects so I expect this to not get better.
Rewatching "The Simpsons", there's a lot of cracks at TV for lowering attention spans. Were they right or just being alarmist? I don't know maybe it was but it couldn't do it nearly as bad as internet short form could. For as much Tv as my brother watched (our parents thought it was a big problem), eventually the show would end, something you didn't like would come on and you wanted to do something else, and the culture at the time socially punished you for not going out and interacting with people at all. You'd be called a weirdo or freak for staying in all day looking at the idiot box. Now people will talk about how they *shouldn't* be expected to want to leave the house because of anxiety, which they probably got because they refuse to use their social muscles.
Not to say anxiety doesn't exist but for these folk, it's definitely because they have no offline social lives.
Oddly I find that watching a full TV episode actually *restores* my attention nowadays. Paying attention to a single thing for 20 minutes is actually helpful...
“Even Substack - which sometimes acts as though it’s the anti-social media form of social media”
Substack auto opens on their twitter clone. And you gotta be real careful when clicking to avoid that Reels clone button. I’m adept at avoiding these now, but I’m a paying customer of this app? Why do I have to wade through social media slop? And it’s infectious. It makes the writing more slop-focused. Sucks to see it enshittified so quickly.
Add Spotify.
We remove tiktok from kids phones they started wat thing tiktok videos people were cross-posting on Spotify. Unbelievable.
I hate shorts so much that i hacked my phone so the YouTube app won't show them to me. The fact that's not an option YouTube presents is borderline criminal.
one of the more notable things about the TikTok ban is that the fact that it's owned by the Chinese government is only half the problem -- the other half of the problem is that the short-form video style invariably makes people stupider.
People getting *the news* from TikTok is a big problem, and even if you don't assume that it harms Democrats, it definitely changes who the Democrats are -- Democratic voters are currently mad at the party for what are extremely dumb reasons, and people like David Hogg are essentially telling Democrats that to appeal to young voters they have to be a lot stupider.
I highly recommend you read the book "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman. Though it was published in 1985, during the heyday of television, the book's thesis is deeply applicable to what you've written here. Neil Postman would be rolling in his grave if he knew just how dominant social media and short form video were in our modern society.
This brilliantly captures something Iabout the current state of the internet. The carcinization metaphor is perfect - there’s something almost inevitable about how every platform has evolved toward the same addictive format, regardless of what they originally were.
What particularly resonates is the about market failure and negative externalities. The fact that short-form video “wins” in terms of engagement doesn’t mean it’s actually providing value - it’s just more effective at hijacking our attention systems. It’s like how sugar outcompetes vegetables in taste tests, but that doesn’t make it better nutrition.
The medium is reshaping not just how we consume content, but what gets created in the first place.
I don’t have solutions either, but awareness really does feel like the first step. At minimum, we can try to be more intentional about our consumption and recognize that these interactions are relationship based….if this content was coming directly from a human, would we engage it in the same way? Would it feel valuable to us? If not, why does it feel so via digital platforms?
I jumped on TikTok for a span of about two weeks a few years ago, and deleted it and never went back. I could literally feel it corroding my attention span. The algorithm there was, in my estimation, the best (in terms of delivering content I wanted to see) of any short form video app, and it was entirely too easy to reach for it whenever I had 30 spare seconds. It had to go.
So right on, JJ. I'm a text guy so not that addicted
Is there any kind of public policy solution that could put a limit on this social media arms race to have the most addicting content?
Thoughts on Romer's proposal to tax digital ads?
https://adtax.paulromer.net/
There was an article in The Economist the other week about how sin taxes actually tend to work quite well.
It's gonna be fine. Humans consume and create. Right now we're in a consumption spike due to the technology in front of us.
But life rides a sine wave. There's little doubt that evolving dynamics will push the culture back to production - it's just as exhilarating when people feel empowered to create.
One thing that’s annoying is you don’t have control over whether it’s shown or not. It’s simply in your feed and sometimes draws you in, which also kind of suggests the companies know people would otherwise turn it off and not see the content.
I guess this can be a new target for European legislation one way or the other and then it’ll be possible to see if people enjoy short videos and will seek them out or are simply happy with them gone.