I get the TikTok addiction, but before that it was fb, before that was the tv, before that the newspaper/magazines, before that the books, before that table games etc

I don’t know it seems that regardless of the technology the brain needs dozing off from reality.

Yesterday someone showed a TikTok video where a friend of him was interviewed on the street. The question was, “What is your best fighting stance?”

I found it surprising how little depth the video had

I haven’t read the study, but I’ve read the comments so far.

I wonder if this mechanism is the same mechanism that impacts, say, swipe-focused dating websites, as well? And Twitter feeds with super-short messages. A lot of the most viral modern tech has been bite-sized content feeds of various types.

That’s a bad thing right?

Less brain, no thinking. Me thinks

Worthwhile to note that “TikTok” here just means the format, not the platform. YouTube has its “shorts”, Facebook, insta, X, et all engage heavily in milking your doom scrolled eyeballs for time and profit.

Blipverts you say.

The brain is incredibly energy hungry so it evolved to detect situations that don’t require full attention and activates the Default Mode Network. This happens when you’re zoning out to pretty much anything, and indicates that you’re essentially in “low power mode”.

My question here is whether the framing of the content in question “shutting off brain regions” is an honest one compared to what I said above. fMRI is amazing to be sure, but what it tells us is limited.

So without endorsing crap content on any way, I’m very skeptical of this article’s conclusions based on the study in question.

the linked study effectively drills down on aspects of previous work ...

"High-frequency SFV [short form video] use was consistently associated with attentional disruption, reduced executive functioning, and emotional dysregulation."

"Neuroimaging results revealed reduced activation in the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC) and Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) regions ... when participants viewed personalised TikTok videos."

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.27.25334540v...

"(The ACC) is involved in ... higher-level functions, such as attention allocation, reward anticipation, decision-making, impulse control .. and emotion."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterior_cingulate_cortex

"The DLPFC is ... the highest cortical area that is involved in motor planning, organization and regulation."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorsolateral_prefrontal_cortex

by permitting unlimited short form content and not disallowing child access we are allowing corporations to destroy kids brains. therefore I posit the latest generation has been rendered retarded, which will pose a dire threat to continued stability unless addressed.

very worrying study, essentially its a digital->neurochemistry chasm crossing substance that uses the 2 senses.

all more reasons to heavily discourage the usage of short form content , we might require regulations against what is essentially an invisible drug that rapidly replicate and distribute itself among the masses.

LLMs and social media is 500+ PHD behavioral psychologists working together to make you do things at any price so they can make as much money as they can - in fact, if they don't try to make as much money as they can, everyone involved will be fired.

To me this is one of the final forms of our current laissez-faire capitalism - we are literally taking away our own agency in the name of "freedom" (of capitalists to maximize returns).