"A dancin' animated monkey! I love it!"As I wrote in my January 17 post, the term “TikTok brain” has gained currency and validity, especially in the psychotherapy realm, and appears to refer to a genuine affliction of our time. Especially of younger brains way too inclined to be mesmerized by dancing monkeys, or dancing peers (in the 14- 20 yr. old range) moving to the rhythms of catchy tunes. Often the defining feature is the younger brain gets hooked on short videos - in the 1- 2 minute range- and becomes so attuned that watching anything longer becomes intolerable. Not to mention actually exercising brain cells - like reading 'The Odyssey'- or even reading a graphic (e.g. Heavy Metal) comic.
The term itself was aptly coined to describe what this insidious app does to brains in their prime. Indeed, the very nature of the short videos endlessly trotted out – impairs memory, attention span and overall mental functioning over time. Kids are left staring at their tiny screens for most of a 24 hour day getting hooked on the memes portrayed by dancing peers while their neurons rot. As my tenured psychology prof niece Shayl - who has done extensive research into kids and social media – put it:
“It leaves most of the regular users in the 10- 14 age group in a kind of semi-retardation if they are hooked into the app more than four or five hours at a time, each day. Many end up unable to read even simple classic literature, say like ‘Alice in Wonderland’, or Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ It’s pathetic. And a lot of this is because their cognitive ability, especially attention span, diminishes to the level of seconds.”
Shayl also has observed that Tik Tok was created to be addictive by design using the short video format although now the optimal length of TikTok videos is estimated to fall between 21 and 34 seconds. But according to her:
"Look, these videos achieve their addiction goals by first being purposely attuned to the users' interests to keep them on the platform as long as possible. Thus, a sorority - say at Auburn or Tulane- may start out by doing a few cutesy videos for fellow 'sisters', then all of a sudden the virus spreads and all the sororities are hooked and doing Tik Toks. Second, this platform operates on the principle of random reinforcement - which makes it easier to hook the kids. especially with user generated content . "
She further emphasized that the constant exposure led to total dependence and an addiction in order to escape boredom. (Which could also have explained why one WaPo commenter reported a bunch of teen viewers in an 'Oppenheimer' cinema showing went bonkers and began acting out. They could not handle the 3 hour long film and its intricate, political, atomic physics, details They had descended to the level of morons)
This is why a new study
from Guizhou University of Finance and Economics in China and Western Michigan
University caught my attention in a piece ('An Antidote for ‘TikTok Brain’ Has Also
Become a Problem, p. A9) in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. The researchers evidently found that short-form videos such as those on TikTok and YouTube engage people through “short bursts of thrills,” which can make it easier to
develop addictive behavior.
YouTube spokeswoman Ivy Choi said that research
into how short-form content impacts young people is still in its early days and
that the company is closely monitoring it. She added that reminders
to take breaks and to go to bed are on by default for users ages 13 to 17. Again, this should be a no brainer for any parents monitoring their charges and it wouldn't hurt to make recommendations for older users too.
Under the sub-header 'hardwired for instant gratification', one read in the same WSJ piece about the tribulations of Robert Verderese. He said his 14-year-old son had become so absorbed in YouTube Shorts that he couldn’t seem to hear his dad tell
him to put down his phone, even though he doesn’t wear headphones. The takeaway here is that Youtube - once thought to be a remedy for TikTok overuse - has now become as addictive as TikTok.
Verderese, quoted in the piece, told his son:
“I’ll give you $1,000 if you look up
at me right now."
An easy grand, right? No way. The mesmerized kiddo glanced up at pop three seconds later with a dumb look and says: ‘What?’”
According to Verderese it doesn't end there. His son used to watch YouTube tutorials while
playing videogames so he could learn how to be more effective in games. But in the past
year, the teen has mostly been watching Shorts purely for entertainment.
Verderese, an equities trader in Short Hills,
N.J., became so frustrated with the quick videos that he emailed Alphabet
to see if there’s a way to disable Shorts (there isn't) or to set a time limit
for the short videos (also not possible).
The study from the Chinese and Michigan
universities, published this month in “Computers in Human Behavior,” a
scholarly journal that examines technology from a psychological perspective,
suggests Verderese’s concerns about short videos aren’t an overreaction.
Researchers also surveyed college students in China
and the U.S. to discover why they excessively watched short-form videos: for
entertainment, to gain new knowledge and to build and maintain their social
identities. The results totally conformed to what Shayl already had seen in her own viewing experiments. Short -form stuff had become mental "crack", the only form possible to access, given the brains had been so acclimatized to fluff.
The similar finding by the Chinese- U.S. researchers led them to recommend students curb such viewing with more
offline activities. They concurred that other online activities, such as videogames,
required longer durations and continuous engagement to drive behavioral
addiction. Hence, they were preferable to the short burster stuff.
Previous studies, like Shayl's found that watching fast-paced
videos (as well as short music-dance TikToks) interferes with children’s ability to perform tasks correctly and
decreases their ability to control their impulses. Little wonder then so many behavior outbursts are exploding at schools across the nation. According to Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at University of California, Irvine quoted in the Journal piece:
“When kids spend a lot of time watching short
videos, they expect to continually be stimulated by fast changes in content,”
This then needs continual reinforcement or the kid blows a gasket, clocking another kid on the playground or even in class. Or attacking a teacher who tries to impose order. Why? Because regular viewing of fast-paced videos can make
everything else seem boring and cause problems with focusing on slow-paced
activities such as schoolwork and reading.
Stunningly it was found kids now spend a lot of time on YouTube, more than TikTok. It’s the social-media app most used by
American teens, with 19% saying they watch YouTube almost constantly, according
to a Pew Research Center study published in April. But what do they watch? Interesting physics or math lectures, e.g.
Curve fitting method || least square method - YouTube
Hardly! They'd rather watch 30 seconds of a dancing animated monkey! Unless this trend gets turned around look for an even more out of touch, propaganda prone lot of citizens - who likely will be too hopped up on short vids to even go out and vote.
See Also:
This Was Supposed to be the Antidote for TikTok Brain. It’s Just as Bad. - WSJ
And:
How Is TikTok Changing Children’s Brains? - The Wall Street Journal Google Your News Update - WSJ Podcasts
And:
Students can’t get off their phones. Schools have had enough
No comments:
Post a Comment