"These days, almost everything is available in the form of quick, bite-sized content-from recipes and skincare tips to news updates. You may find yourself swiping through reels, tapping through stories, or scrolling endless feeds, often without even realizing where your time really went. This is true for many of us, due to the way content is designed now: Fast and impossible to look away from."
"Experts warn that this habit, which we often dismiss as "just watching videos," is actually changing how our brains work. They are dulling our focus, weakening our memory, and even disrupting decision-making. This is backed by new research published in NeuroImage. Researchers conducted a study that examined the psychological and neurological effects of short-video compulsion. They used a combination of behavioral analysis, brain imaging, and computational models of decision-making."
Fast, bite-sized content pervades digital platforms and is engineered to capture attention within seconds, fostering habitual, compulsive consumption. Short, snappy formats and rapid trend cycles encourage endless scrolling and reduce sustained focus. The term brain rot describes resulting mental fog and cognitive decline linked to this behavior. Neuroscientific evidence using behavioral measures, brain imaging, and computational decision models associates short-video compulsion with dulled attention, impaired memory, disrupted decision-making, and decreased sensitivity to real consequences such as weakened loss aversion. Industries optimize short content for engagement, amplifying these cognitive risks.
Read at Psychology Today
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