Videos rule social media right now, from TikToks to Instagram Reels to YouTube Shorts. But a new study suggests that the constant churn of short video clips may be changing our perception of time. WSJ family and tech columnist Julie Jargon joins to discuss how that could harm young people’s developing brains—and what social media companies and parents can do to help. Danny Lewis hosts.
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[00:00:02] Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Tuesday, October 6th. I'm Danny Lewis for The Wall Street Journal. Video rules social media feeds right now, and the constant churn of TikTok clips, Instagram reels, and YouTube shorts served up through our phones may actually be altering how we perceive time itself. The Wall Street Journal's family and tech columnist, Julie Jargon, wrote about a new study that looked at just that. She joins us now.
[00:00:27] Julie, first I want to take a step back. You've covered families and tech for a long time. From what you've seen, how has the rise of this kind of video changed the landscape of social media? It's really dominated. Instead of the static posts that once were the main part of our social media feeds, now we've got reels and shorts and really brief video clips, and those seem to kind of take over.
[00:00:53] And the effect has been to shorten our attention span because we're used to these bite-sized videos and it's hard to pay attention to longer form videos. But it's doing something else, too, for teenagers especially. Yeah, let's get into that. This new study out of China involved more than 1,500 participants. What were the researchers looking into and what did they discover? So there were some researchers at several universities in China that took a look at how these short-form videos were affecting high school students.
[00:01:20] And they found something really interesting, which is that it affects what's called a future time perspective. And that's this multidimensional way of thinking that adults are pretty good at doing, but that is more difficult for kids. And that is linking the benefit of doing something in the present to some sort of future outcome. So for students, that might mean understanding the benefit of studying for a test because that can result in a good grade on that exam.
[00:01:46] And that can then lead to better grades overall and admission to college and eventually a decent job. And what these short-form videos have done is alter that perspective because they work on the reward circuits of the brain, which really feed this whole idea of instant gratification.
[00:02:06] And when you have that constant feed of gratifying videos, what it does is it hurts the ability of the brain to decide, I need to set this aside now and study for that exam. And the gratification of watching those videos overcomes that sort of future time perspective. And so that really puts teens in sort of this negative reinforcement loop. What is it about short-form videos that appear to be particularly damaging?
[00:02:34] These videos raise the dopamine levels of the brain, and that's the kind of feel-good neurotransmitter that gets activated when you anticipate something that is pleasurable. So because of these videos are novel and they're exciting, and because they're so short, they're very easy to consume quickly. That just makes the brain crave them more. And you can lose your sense of time by watching video after video, and an hour or two can go by.
[00:03:03] And it just makes it harder to focus on what needs to be done in the present. That temptation is there to just keep watching the videos. And it's just acting on the powerful reward circuits of the brain the same way that, you know, addiction to substances and other things. It's all the same part of the brain that's being activated during these videos. The study looked at high school students, but adults aren't immune to the infinite scroll themselves. Are they affected as well?
[00:03:28] Certainly, you know, while the study was looking at high school students, I talked to some experts who said this is something that affects adults too. None of us can completely overcome the power of these short videos when we get used to watching them. But for the teenage brain, it's even worse because, you know, the teenage brain isn't fully developed until about the age of 25. The prefrontal cortex, which is a part of the brain that controls impulses and is involved in tasks like planning ahead and organizing, that's just underdeveloped.
[00:03:56] Anybody who knows a teenager knows that it's hard for them to control their impulses and set aside things that are more fun and favor things that are not so much fun but that might carry future rewards. So that's what's really kind of upsetting, I guess, and worrisome about this study is that you've already got the teenage brain that's susceptible to impulsive behavior. And when you add these short form videos into the mix, it makes it even harder.
[00:04:21] What does it mean practically for young people to have a harder time connecting their choices in the present to what could happen in the future? One of the immediate consequences is that grades can fail. If you're not studying for that test and you're not thinking that test matters and that has some sort of link to your future, you're going to be less inclined to give it the weight that it requires.
[00:04:42] One of the things that these study authors looked at was what they call academic buoyancy or just the ability to bounce back and recover from an academic pressure or setback. If students are having a hard time handling poor grades, instead of working harder to maybe do better on the next test, they might be more inclined to use short form videos as an escape. So that sort of creates a negative cycle. So as a parent myself, this all seems pretty scary. Were the study's findings all bad, though?
[00:05:10] One of the findings is that your ability to overcome academic difficulties improves when you do have a strong future point of view. So to the extent that students can cultivate that and really understand that what they're doing in the present affects the future, that can be helpful. And they can use that to their advantage to overcome whatever setbacks they might be facing in school. Do you find yourself stuck in an endless scroll of short social videos? If you're a listener on Spotify, let us know in the comments.
[00:05:40] Coming up, is there anything we can do to stop our kids from scrolling? That's after the break. Welcome back to the show. Okay, so we've talked through the results of this study, and I want to shift now and talk about potential solutions here.
[00:06:10] First, Julie, what can social media companies do about this? Well, one of the things that social media companies have said they're going to do is place limits on the amount of time people can use the app. Meta platforms, for example, recently reached a settlement with some different states that were intended to keep children safer online.
[00:06:30] And as part of that, they agreed to place a two-hour daily limit for teens across Instagram and Facebook and also block those feeds during late night hours when a lot of kids are staying up late scrolling. As part of their settlement agreement, Meta platforms has asked TikTok, YouTube and Snap to place similar restrictions on their apps. And their reason for doing so is that it's meaningless if just one tech giant does this.
[00:06:58] So, Julie, I've got a 14-month-old at home, and I mean, you know, he's not quite on the social media apps yet. But he's probably going to be interested in them at some point. How should parents approach helping their kids manage their relationship with these apps, especially when they can have such an impact on their developing brains? I would say that the number one best thing to do is to delay it as long as possible. And that gets really hard when they reach a certain age, especially starting around middle school. I know this from personal experience.
[00:07:26] Once all their friends have it, they want it too. And it's hard to be that holdout that says, no, let's wait. But to the extent that you can hold out as long as possible, with each year of brain maturity and development, it becomes better for them to not have all of this at their fingertips.
[00:07:42] But if and when they do have these social media apps, having a lot of conversations about how to use them properly and in a healthy way, which includes time limits on them and some of these other things like keeping the phones out of the bedrooms at night, those can certainly help them learn how to control their own time on their devices. As a person reporting in this space, is there anything that you're seeing on the horizon that could be rising to take the place of these short form videos in terms of how they impact children?
[00:08:13] We're already seeing the rising use of AI chatbots. Even middle school students are increasingly using AI chatbots. The chatbots are allowing kids to have a back and forth conversation.
[00:08:24] And that's already starting to create some problems for kids who are developing unhealthy attachments to the point where they feel that those chatbots are a real friend that may or may not be dispensing appropriate advice to them that might be overly agreeing with them and validating them instead of pushing back on them the way other human beings do. So we're already seeing a migration to chatbots or at least a supplement of chatbots in addition to social media. That was WSJ columnist Julie Jargon.
[00:08:54] And that's it for Tech News Briefing. If you're a listener on Spotify, be sure to leave us a comment. Today's show was produced by me with supervising producer Katie Ferguson. I'm Danny Lewis for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tomorrow with a new episode. Thanks for listening.