By Tarunya Dharmarajan
Tarunya is a member of ConnectSafely’s Youth Advisory Council.
Memes, vlogs, dancing videos. Slowly, you sink into an abyss of influencers promoting products and “Sephora kids” filming “get ready with me” videos. I’m no stranger to this feeling, and neither are you. The internet has always seen issues and controversy, the latest problem stemming from the rise of short-form content.
TikTok burst onto the scene in 2018, captivating millions worldwide with its addictive 15-second clips. By 2022, it became a social media phenomenon as its bite-sized videos became a go-to source of entertainment for quarantined users. People shared their favorite pandemic recipes (banana bread and Dalgona coffee being some of the most popular), posted videos of themselves dancing to trendy sounds, and participated in challenges. Seeing TikTok’s success in the social media industry, many companies followed the short-form content model: Facebook and Instagram introduced “Reels,” and YouTube inaugurated its “Shorts” section. But amidst the flurry of curated content, there lurked a serious problem, one that was ruining the mental health and development of users.
I first downloaded TikTok back when it was known as Musical.ly, where I made short videos with my parents, lip-syncing to my favorite songs. Though my memory of the app is limited as I was quite young, I remember it being much simpler than the social media mania characteristic of today’s apps. But once ByteDance took over Musical.ly and rebranded it as TikTok, my perception and use of social media changed drastically. While my usage thus far had been limited to a few minutes per day, my foray into TikTok had me scrolling for hours on end. I stopped all of the singing and filming and dove into the endless stream of watching videos. It was then that I noticed the major problem with short-form content: it was a cycle that baited you and didn’t let go until your attention span diminished and you yearned to come back to the app. Like many other users of TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, I could clearly see my growing inability to focus on a task at hand. The easiest homework assignment took an hour at minimum, with multiple phone pickups to continue my scrolling. An hour or two into scrolling, I would reluctantly put my phone down, feeling guilty about all the time I’d wasted. I’d half-focus for a bit, then pick up right where I left off, going back to my phone. And when I made the last ditch effort to put all my devices away, I would still look for any possible distraction, even if it was just staring outside my window. While I was able to acknowledge the issue, I didn’t know how to solve it.
Taking control
That was until I started learning about the algorithms that social media apps use. In an attempt to find out why I was so addicted to my feed, I read some articles about how algorithms use data of your interactions in the app (and, in some cases, outside the app) to recommend content intended to interest you and keep you hooked. Essentially, what you give is what you get. So why not change what you’re giving? I realized that if I feed my algorithm content that I know I’m less interested in, I’m more likely to stop scrolling. So, I began something I called an algorithmic reset. Over a period of a few weeks, I began consuming content that I didn’t have much interest in, like science concept explanations and finance analysis videos (obviously, areas of lesser interest depend heavily on the person).
After a while, I noticed that my screen time had drastically reduced. I was picking up my phone less and focusing on other activities. And even when I did pick up my phone, I was watching productive videos that would help me learn something without maxing my brain’s dopamine level. While the change didn’t happen overnight, I was able to gradually build up my attention span to nearly the same level as before. The algorithmic reset was much more efficient than my past attempts at reducing phone usage since tackling the root cause of the problem without trying to quit cold turkey helped me ease out of doom scrolling. My experience with social media mirrors that of countless others who have found themselves stuck in this cycle, struggling to regain control. However, understanding the underlying mechanisms that drive these platforms can provide a path to recovery. By consciously altering the content you consume, it is possible to break free from the grip of these addictive apps. In the end, it’s not about escaping the digital world but about mastering it, one mindful scroll at a time.
Opinions expressed by members of ConnectSafely’s Youth Advisory Council do not necessarily reflect those of the council as a whole or ConnectSafely.