Short-Form Video Consumption and Sustained Attentional Stability in Young People

Abstract

The study of short-form video and attention was designed to explore the relationship between the amount of short-form video that young people consume on a daily basis and two measures of attentional stability (i.e. sustained focus duration and mind-wandering frequency). Using a quantitative cross-sectional survey of 200 participants (14–24 years of age), data were analyzed using Spearman’s rank-order correlations, multiple linear regression, and non-parametric group comparisons. The results of the study demonstrated that an increase in short-form video consumption on a daily basis was associated with a decrease in sustained focus duration, and an increase in mind-wandering. These two measures of attentional instability were also highly correlated and predicted by short-form video consumption. After controlling for a number of potential confounding variables (i.e. age, gender, level of education, reading habits), multiple regression revealed that short-form video consumption remained the strongest predictor of attentional instability. Importantly, an analysis of the data by age-group (i.e. adolescents, 14–18 years of age; young adults, 18–24 years of age) revealed that attentional difficulties were reported by the adolescents in the study more frequently than by the young adults. However, there were no reported differences in attentional instability between males and females in the study. Overall, the results of the current study provide support for a number of existing theoretical models of the impact of short-form video on attention and suggest that habitual exposure to fast-paced short-form video, which is curated by algorithms, results in a reduction in attentional capacity.