Sometimes, after spending twenty minutes reading tweets, I ask myself: What would I do now if the smartphone didn’t exist? It is almost impossible to deny that some activities They are displaced due to the use of social networks. This does not mean that we have stopped meeting friends, reading or walking in the park, although we may have reduced the frequency of those habits; A new hobby has begun to occupy a large part of our free hours. Social networks were used, initially, for interaction, to find people one had stopped seeing over time – an elementary school classmate, an ex-boyfriend, a distant cousin – or to maintain contact with those who were at a distance. But then they started being used for another purpose: content consumption. In part, the social network is beginning to replace television; It has become common to be a viewer of a series of short-form audiovisual content produced by the 2 billion active users of Instagram, the 1.59 billion active users of TikTok, or the 3 billion active users of Facebook. “Short video platforms, such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, have become an important part of many people’s daily lives.” But what does this consist of?
Imagine that you are in a room and every minute a different person comes to talk about a different topic, and this repeats itself tirelessly. What will be the effect? exhaustion? pressure? Today, teenagers and some adults experience something similar during their free time when they watch short video clips, one after another.
Those of us who are still distracted by the TV can spend a few minutes scrolling and jumping from one channel to another; It is the previous step to choosing what we want to see. But in social networks, non-choice often becomes choice itself: the user does not know what content he will encounter, the sequence of video clips is entertainment, and the user only decides how many seconds to devote to each clip. It is common to choose not to delve into any theme, character, or creator. Pluralism, diversity and influence It can lead to exhaustion, confusion, and saturation.
If we hear someone change the topic every minute, this would be an indication of mental hyperactivity, disorganized thinking, or difficulty following a coherent conversation. We think he has gone crazy. Today, constantly jumping from one idea to another is what is required. The same changing audio-visual stimuli generate chaos. Within three minutes, attention can be drawn to different topics: what diet is the most effective, which celebrity is the current football player dating, vertical gardens, what is supplementation, how to make a brownie with two ingredients and what the president said on Twitter. Outside of the virtual world, it would be difficult to expose yourself to so many problems in such a short time. What are the effects of this overstimulation on our psychology? A new meta-analysis https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2026-89350-001.html published in the APA Journal — titled “Abstracts, Emotions, and Focus: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Examining Associations Between the Use of Short Videos, Cognition, and Mental Health” — analyzed 71 studies and over 98,000 participants measuring the effects of short videos. In cognition and mental health. Its authors assert that it is “one of the most complete and comprehensive syntheses to date” on the subject. Conclusion? High use of these platforms is associated with poorer cognitive performance and lower mental health. In both young and old.
The authors note that: “People who spend more time watching short video clips tend to have more difficulty concentrating, have poorer impulse control, and feel more stressed and anxious. Endless fast clips train the brain to crave constant stimulation, making schoolwork, reading, and real life easier.” I feel more difficult and bored.“
Furthermore, the immersive and infinitely animated nature of short videos has been linked to increased social isolation by replacing real interactions with passive digital consumption, exacerbating feelings of loneliness (Goldon, 2024). This reliance on online interactions has also been associated with lower life satisfaction (Chung, 2022; Zuo et al., 2024).
The analysis reveals that the main negative effect occurs in attention and impulse control: “moderate and negative associations with attention and inhibitory control were most common.”
Humans have created a virtual underworld in which we spend more and more time, where interaction is lacking, the form of entertainment is as novel as it is unnecessary, and stimuli are excessive. It is not a matter of demonizing social networks, tools that have given many people access to new work, love, social opportunities or gaining new knowledge through access to published texts, but it is necessary to realize that self-regulation should fall on the individual and not on the algorithm. Remaining in a state of passivity, undergoing compulsive and automatic exposure to brief, highly reinforcing auditory and visual stimuli, This does not seem to be a positive habit.
It took decades to understand that smoking is harmful to health or that minors should not consume alcohol. How many years will it take us to understand that the mind must also be preserved? We must tirelessly warn of the dangers of these new habits Which can affect attention and peace of mind.
Psychologist and writer