Some of the things our current generation struggles to fight against are their addiction to social media/ short videos such as Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, and TikTok videos. As years have passed, creators or apps have been proposing ideas that could grasp the young society’s attention by only using short and simple videos that last minutes or even seconds. According to recent research, this addiction to short videos and social media has had an impact on the human brain psychologically. These apps extend the influence to another level as they shift one’s memory, behavior, cognition, and mental health.

TikTok embodies the purpose of rewarding the brain, releasing vast amounts of dopamine (a neurotransmitter connected with pleasure) as it provides consistent content full of excitement and anticipation. This cycle and continuous scroll can influence and lead the brain to worse addictive behaviors. Not only that but the videos being exhibited to the audience deliver a specific mood or attitude toward them. Whether this can be inspiration, humor, empathy, depression, or others, they provide a diverse range of emotions that can relate to the specific audience’s taste. Comments or videos that show disrespectful attitudes or influence towards the audience can impact one’s moral beliefs and perception of society. 

Although most of these impacts on the brain contain emotional influence and mental health, there has been recent research regarding how these short videos aggravate one’s memory and cognition. With the constant scrolling of these short videos, the audience tends to forget the videos that they have coincided with, which would lead to worse habits such as forgetting things quickly or having shorter memory loss. Evidence shows how frequent TikTok users are unable to focus on long video formats, do homework for a certain time, or even read a book. They tend to find it stressful or boring as it’s not as quick as the TikTok videos. 

김시유 강남포스트 학생기자  webmaster@ignnews.kr

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