yeah I'm trying to watch less YT, hard for me to just sit in silence and think

trying to be more of a producer than consumer, not saying this to look down I'm socially/financially a failure, trying to change my habits

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thanhhaimai 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Long form educational YT videos are amazing. It makes my brain work hard, and I feel like I learn more.

Short form pop content like TikTok doesn't give my brain enough time to engage the thinking muscle.

I think it's better to identify the characteristics of the media we consume, rather than lumping all of them together.

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righthand 3 hours ago | parent [-]

There could be overconsumption effects of short form media that exist in long form certainly.

You’re hand waving it away because you prefer long videos. What about all the people using TikTok as a search engine?

	▲	godelski 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I don't think you're wrong but I think you're being too quick to attack the gp. They're not wrong either. The point you brought up doesn't contradict theirs but adds nuance. I'm all for nuance. Its also why I'm biased towards long form media as it's more likely to contain nuance, but not guaranteed. The gps specific example of lectures is quite narrow and more likely to have depth. Which is the entire problem of short form media, that we live in a complex world where we can't distill everything into 1-2 minute segments. Hell, even a lecture series, which will be over 10hrs of content is not enough to make one an expert on all but the most trivial of topics. You're right that we need nuance but you're not right in arguing for it while demonstrating a lack of it. A major issue is we need to communicate, something we're becoming worse at. We should do our best to speak and write as clearly as possible but at the end of the day language is so imprecise that a listener or reader will be able to construct many, and even opposing, narratives. It is more important to be a good listener than a good speaker. I'd hope programmers, of all people, could understand this as we've invented overly pedantic languages with the explicit purpose of minimizing ambiguity[0] [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FN2RM-CHkuI
	▲	oceansky 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		May God help them

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chickensong an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> hard for me to just sit in silence and think

Maybe practice slowing down by reading a book. Any book, hard copy.

> trying to be more of a producer than consumer

Thank you!

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pcthrowaway 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The paper is specifically studying short-form videos like on TikTok or Youtube Shorts, so there would be no implication for videos longer than 3 minutes (the maximum for YT shorts)

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righthand 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I don’t think it’s correct to say there are no implications. The only discernable difference between a short and long videos effects is that one of the videos is capped at 3 minutes. There could be plenty of implication and correlation to high intake watching videos of any length.

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Chabsff 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There is a HUGE difference in that the combined short length with the fact that the video starts playing before you even have a chance to make a decision on whether to watch it or not leads you to a "heh! I'm here already, might as well just watch the thing".

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righthand an hour ago | parent [-]

This is a response to you and the other Y people that confuse short videos with autoplay and user engagement techniques.

There are people that autoplay long videos, in fact people stream random Simpson’s (or other favorite tv show, podcast, music, books on tape, etc) episodes in the background while they work. Classic TV has autoplay with no opportunity to decide. Autoplay is not an exclusive short form video feature. I can make a short video on my computer and it will not autoplay other content.

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Chabsff an hour ago | parent [-]

There's no confusion here. It's pretty easy to make the argument that the combination of auto play and short form is orders of magnitude more problematic than the sum of their parts.

	▲	righthand 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yes but then we’re not talking about short form video being addictive but rather the hunt for a good short form video is addictive. This same idea can be applied to long form and any other medium you enjoy, finish, and immediately want more of. Now if you have only 30 mins before your next task to watch a long form video then you may skip starting the video, but that doesn’t mean there is anything inherently bad about short form video but rather the tools for viewing it. So yes you are confusing and you’re intentionally confusing the two so that your point stands about short form video, but it doesn’t because your points are about the viewing tools. If you continue to push this point, people will only think that short videos under 3 minutes are some how the devil and TikTok et al will continue on making whatever length of video is next in line, more addictive.

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unethical_ban 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sure, but that's beside the point. The discussion here is about the unique qualities of SFV and its affects on attention span and thinking. It's about the instant-reward feedback mechanism of swiping quickly and the ability to ingest a larger narrative. It's about the super-short cuts of video and audio that beg for attention, versus longer, more static content that requires patience, doesn't constantly dump dopamine, and stays on one topic longer.

In short: There are a lot of differences in how long and short videos affect a person, in my opinion.

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the_af 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't know if that's the only discernible difference.

While 3 minutes is indeed an arbitrary limit, the difference between short and long form videos is very noticeable. Long form requires another form of attention, focusing more, more commitment, less distraction; there's even a form of "delayed gratification" (a form of attention that only grownups can provide) in that the payoff isn't always immediate and can sometimes be very delayed.

Short form is like junk food, zero friction, instantly addictive and doesn't require you to really pay attention. Surely the immediacy of attention it needs is completely different to long form video.

I also disagree with your other comment that maybe long form can promote similar consumption habits (you call it "overconsumption"); I don't think anyone can get "addicted" to long form video, it's simply too time-demanding, you don't get a "fix" and the "zapping" effect of quickly moving from one video to the next.

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pcthrowaway 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I probably spend 1-2 hours per day watching content on youtube (and much of that is at ~1.5-1.75X speed)

I don't know what qualifies as "addiction", but it is typically where I get my news, where a web-series I watch is released, and where I learn about social justice issues important to me, through video essays.

I'm sure my consumption is very different from that of someone who watches 100 1-minute Tiktok videos per day, but I think it's worth at least questioning how this might also contribute to cognitive performance and mental health.

Though I think a big difference with short-form content is the autoplay functionality (as your sibling commenter mentions). I watch videos which are released by channels I subscribe to, and occasionally (maybe once a week) watch something Youtube recommends to me. So I retain some agency over my viewing habits compared to someone whose decisions are dictated by the algorithm, which also has an incentive to keep people watching as long as possible.

	▲	the_af 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Are your habits typical though? Playing long form videos at 1.75 speed? I suppose once you start engaging at hyperspeeds, you're making it closer to short form compulsive consumption. It'd be like speed reading a book instead of letting ideas and thoughts form.

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kevin_thibedeau 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Learn to watch at 2x speed (or faster with an extension). Then use the saved time for productive activities.

	▲	godelski 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think you should watch at whatever speed you best ingest the material. Don't get me wrong, some lectures I watch at 2x but it isn't about optimizing speed. It's about optimizing attention. I go faster if the speaker is too slow and/or too monotone so my mind starts drifting. Speeding up can force me to concentrate and not drift but the right speed is dependent in many factors that it can't be a hard rule. Regardless of the speed, in a lecture video I'll pause and rewind. That's the large benefit to them, though at the cost of being unable to engage and interact. There's no deficit of time in the day, the deficit is in energy and attention. I'm worried we conflate speed and productivity (I'm unsure if you do or don't) but these are original. Speed gives the illusion of productivity but it is ignorant of quality and efficiency. It's only a first order approximation of productivity and a noisy one at best. Velocity is more important, as it requires direction but even velocity is ignorant of momentum, acceleration, force, and many other factors that go into making one productive. Speed is only important if everything else is held constant. Let's not confuse speed for productivity. I'd argue that is a major contributing factor that has gotten us to this point. Where everything appears to move fast but in reality moves slower than ever
	▲	junglistguy 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[dead]

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SlightlyLeftPad 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I hate that I can’t use youtube at all without being forced to fed short form video content. Or kids schools referencing youtube content for educational purposes and they are then force fed short form video content.

	▲	Chabsff 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Honestly, I don't mind the format in principle, and the process that goes from YT's homepage to watching a single one of them is not that bad to me. As long as I get to make a decision that I want to watch something, consciously go "I will click on this thing and watch it" and only then proceed to watch it, then it's _fine_. It's the algorithmic loop that starts the moment you scroll to the next video that starts playing before you even have a chance to decide whether or not it's something that you want to watch that's abhorrent to me.
	▲	mrandish 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		On Firefox you can block short form content from YouTube as easily as adding one extension or a few uBlock Origin filter lines. With a bit more work it's possible to fix a lot of other stuff using various browser extensions and userscripts on desktop/laptop. On mobile (Android) I use an app that patches the YT executable called "Revanced Extended" (https://github.com/inotia00/ReVanced_Extended). On set top (Android TV sticks) I use an app called SmartTube (https://smarttubeapp.github.io/). On desktop/laptop I decided to go deeper into YT customization. My current mod stack for YT completely re-imagines the YT interface to be focused and space efficient, replaces spammy, inaccurate thumbnails with actual video stills, re-formats spammy ALL CAPS AtTentIoN SeEKiNG headlines, shows enough of the expanded description to be useful and outright blocks a bunch of stuff I never want to see (channel promos, upcoming, shorts, live streams, algorithm recommendations, etc). It takes me straight to a grid of only new videos posted by the niche channels I subscribe to, so I never even see the Youtube home page. Warning: I cobbled together this stack over time out of disparate unrelated components by just experimenting until I found a combination which "fixes" YT in exactly the ways I want. Even though it heavily customizes YT, it's all been working great with no changes for over two years - but YT could break it any time. If you're okay with that, this should get you started: 1. A UserScript YouTube 'mod platform' called [Nova YouTube](https://github.com/raingart/Nova-YouTube-extension). This does the thumbnail, description and other reformatting as well as most of the content blocking by type (with a couple uBO filters found in the uBO subreddit). 2. A Stylus userstyles (CSS) mod called [AdashimaaTube](https://github.com/sapondanaisriwan/AdashimaaTube). This mostly handles reformatting the interface like number of rows and columns in grids and selectively removing YT's dark-pattern UI cruft. 3. "Youtube Enhancer" (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-enhan...) is a Firefox add-on which I mostly use for one feature it does perfectly (auto-expanding videos to fill the browser viewport but not in 'full-screen'). I also like the way Enhanced YouTube's configurable player interface buttons work and look. My YT account was created in 2008 and until I did this I didn't even realize just how awful YT had become because it was done so gradually over the years. There are a lot of different add-ons and userscripts out there and the ones I happened to land on may not suit you, so just try different options to see what's possible and then experiment until you find a stack which works for you.