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this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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Honestly the short form content incentivizing formats should be dropped altogether. Short form content has pretty clearly fried people's attention spans and burnt a lot of their fuse to boot.
The incentive to be smug snappy and smarmy to own people for internet points is too much, nevermind the algorithms that more or less act as a match finder for mass shouting contests as opposed to organic socialization where people who aren't psychopaths tend to have the good sense to just ignore each other if they encounter irreconcilable differences of ethical and political values.
That's right, the echo chamber was invented by the social media companies to gaslight you for not being happy they basically play rage tinder with your feed.
I don't think there's actually any evidence that short-form content reduces people's attention spans.
I think short form video specifically is pretty bad (in high volume)
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1298361/full
It looks like that study checked the effects of short-form content addiction, rather than short-form content in general. Addiction can be caused by underlying factors, such as stress or depression, which are shown to reduce attention span so I don't think it really shows a direct causal connection. In fact, I think it's more accurate to say short attention spans cause short-form content rather than the other way around.
That said, excessive social media consumption can make stress and depression worse, I just think we're focussing on the wrong aspect of social media's effect on our mental health.