A recent study tends to show the danger of one of the most known and downloaded applications in the world.
Our modern smartphones have millions of applications. Each of them can serve a particular function or encompass several to make our lives easier. On average, an average smartphone user will open up to 9 applications per day for various activities. But not all of them are necessarily good for use daily, as demonstrated by a recent study published in the “Journal of Experimental Psychology”.
This 18-page study, which we were able to consult, is the result of several months of research within an academic journal based in the United States. The latter addresses in particular the effects of certain smartphone applications and especially the chaining of short videos inherent in YouTube, Netflix and especially TikTok.
It is indeed the TikTok application that is mainly discussed in this study. With more than 1,000 participants, the study researchers wanted to contrast the chaining of multiple short videos with the viewing of a single long video of around ten minutes. Without real surprise, the “guinea pigs” of the experiment felt much more satisfaction when watching the longest video. These participants said they were more immersed and felt feel less boredom than when watching multiple short videos in a row.
The lead researcher of this study, Katy Tam, therefore concluded that watching several short videos, like scrolling through TikTok, was harmful to the human brain and quickly caused a feeling of boredom in addition to covering only a very low need for entertainment. It is therefore strongly recommended not to spend too much time on short apps and formats like TikTok, YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels. Watching longer videos and movies is also recommended to avoid falling into a bad habit of endlessly "scrolling" short videos.
Unfortunately, the phenomenon of short videos does not seem to be fading away. As Ouest-France points out in an interview with the general director of YouTube France, very short formats work very well and YouTube Shorts (short clips broadcast on the YouTube website and application) already represent 70 billion daily views on average across the world.