So, I cannot stand clickbait article titles, and I promise this isn’t one of them, but I’ll confess right off the bat here that I’m not at all fussed over these findings. I am, in fact, “the boomers” in this equation. I spend under 20 hours on YouTube each year, and I’ve never installed TikTok, nor seen a single Instagram Reels video in my life. This isn’t to lambast those who are into this stuff. There’s plenty to learn from them, as my friends routinely remind me. That’s fine. It’s just not for me.
And that’s probably for the best, because I’ve found plenty of other ways to experience what the kids are now labeling “brainrot,” and they’re doing so with such reckless abandon that people with games with brainrot in their titles are suing other people who went for the same play. But consider this a friendly word of warning from a non-tuber: nearly 100,000 people recently took part in a wide-spanning scientific survey, and researchers are pretty sure watching heaps of short-form videos is, in fact, harmful to your health.
71 Papers Can’t Possibly Be Wrong… Right?
The American Psychological Association’s verdict is clear: short-form video is bad for mental health. As spotted by Dexerto, the full report does as thorough a job raking the content over the coals as any psychological study ever can, with choice quotes like “…the immersive and infinite-scrolling nature of SFVs has been linked to increased isolation by replacing real-world interactions with passive digital engagement, exacerbating feelings of loneliness.”
“Such reliance on online interactions has also been correlated with lower life satisfaction (Chung, 2022; Zuo et al., 2024). These associations between SFV use and mental health have been reported across youths, young adults, and middle-aged adults…” -American Psychological Association
To be clear, “some studies have reported no association between SFV use and mental health indices,” and it’s important to note that the paper urges further “quantitative synthesis of the existing research.” By and large, however, there’s quite a bit to worry over. Some studies “report negative associations” for self-esteem and body image. Poor sleep quality has been found as well.
Arguably the most damning of all, there’s a fair degree of evidence here that a person’s attention span diminishes with the mass consumption of short-form videos. The high stimulation induced by SFVs can “desensitize” the brain, as a 1970 study on general cognitive processing (cited in this report) indicates, and lead to poorer reading performance and a decline in the ability to solve problems of all sorts.
Just how many people participated in the APA’s research? 98,299. 71 separate papers were correlated and combined into the final copy, as is customary in the scientific field (though not always with such huge numbers!), and it’s really not looking good. Then again, some of my own peers who are glued to their phones even as we sit down for lunch together will be the first to admit their attention spans are rough, which… well, the evidence therein does rather speak for itself.
