A recent study tends to show the dangerousness of one of the most famous and downloaded applications in the world.
Our modern smartphones have millions of applications. Each of them can serve a particular function or encompass several to make our lives easier. On average, an average smartphone user will open up to 9 applications per day for various activities. But not all of them are necessarily good for daily use, as demonstrated by a recent study published in the “Journal of Experimental Psychology”.
This study, 18 pages long and which we were able to consult, is the result of several months of research in an academic journal based in the United States. The latter addresses in particular the effects of certain smartphone applications and especially the sequence of short videos inherent to YouTube, Netflix and especially TikTok.
It is indeed the TikTok application that is mainly in question in this study. With more than 1000 people participating, the researchers in the study wanted to contrast the sequence of multiple short videos with the viewing of a single long video of around ten minutes. Without real surprise, the “guinea pigs” of the experiment felt much more satisfaction when watching the longest video. These participants said they were more immersed and felt less boredom than when watching multiple short videos.
The lead researcher of this study, Katy Tam, therefore concluded that watching several short videos like scrolling on TikTok was harmful to the human brain and quickly caused a feeling of boredom in addition to covering only one very low need for entertainment. It is therefore strongly recommended not to spend too much time on applications and short formats like TikTok, YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels. Watching longer videos and films is also recommended so as not to fall into a bad habit of infinite “scrolling” of short videos.
Unfortunately, the phenomenon of short videos does not seem to be fading. As Ouest-France points out in an interview with the general director of YouTube France, very short formats work very well and YouTube Shorts (small clips broadcast on the YouTube website and the application) already represent 70 billion daily views. on average across the world.