You open TikTok to watch one video. Half an hour later, you are still scrolling.
TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts have made short form video a constant part of everyday life, filling spare moments with an endless stream of entertainment, information and distraction.
For university student Ella Egerton, that habit can follow her from her phone to her desk.
“It’s an issue when I study. It’s happened one too many times where I’ll just open the apps automatically and my laptop will just sit on the desk and I won’t touch it.”
The attention problem
Ella’s experience reflects growing research into how short form content can affect concentration and study habits.
A 2023 Chinese study found an association between short form video use and academic procrastination, with attentional control also playing a role.
Senior psychology lecturer Dr Cindy Branch-Smith says the constant movement between different tasks can make it harder to maintain focus.
“Frequent task switching can reduce comprehension and productivity, and short form platforms provide quick, emotionally engaging content with very little effort required from the user.”
But that does not necessarily mean TikTok is permanently reducing people’s ability to concentrate.
There are other factors at play, including how often students use the platforms and what happens when scrolling continues late into the night.
Scrolling into the night
Recent research by Sanjida Haque mapped a decade of research on TikTok’s impact on mental health, cognition, sleep, and social outcomes, identifying sleep disturbance as one of the recurring concerns associated with problematic use.
For students, losing sleep can have consequences the following day, particularly when they are expected to concentrate in lectures or complete university work.
Ella says she has noticed this herself.
“If I stay up late scrolling, I find it very hard to study the next day.”
She has also noticed a change in how she consumes longer videos.
“I find myself skipping to the end of videos to get to the point quicker or I’ll just watch the video at a faster speed if it’s longer than a minute or so because I just get bored.”
Is TikTok the cause?
Dr Branch-Smith says the relationship between attention difficulties and social media is more complicated than simply blaming the apps.
“People who already experience attention difficulties may be more drawn to highly stimulating social media.”
That means students who struggle to concentrate may be more likely to seek out fast moving content in the first place.
But there is another part of the equation: the way these platforms are designed.
TikTok does not ask users to choose what they want to watch next. The next video is already waiting.
Every swipe brings something new, and the content becomes increasingly tailored to what an individual has previously watched, liked or searched for.
“Their recommendation algorithms learn what captures an individual’s attention, while the uncertainty about what the next video will contain encourages continued scrolling,” Dr Branch-Smith said.
Despite concerns about distraction, short form video is not entirely negative.
The same platforms that can eat into study time can also give students quick access to information they might otherwise struggle to find.
Ella says social media has even helped her with university work.
“I used to struggle with referencing, and a video came up on my feed which showed me a much easier way to do it and now I’ve stuck to it through all my uni years.”
When does scrolling stop?
Unlike a television program or a book, there is no obvious point where a TikTok feed tells you that you have reached the end.
There is always another video.
Ella says that constant access has made boredom harder to escape.
“It’s hard to be bored when there is so much variety of stuff online. I can type a single word into my search bar and see hours and hours’ worth of videos on that topic.”
For students like Ella, the challenge may not be learning how to pay attention again. It may be learning when to stop scrolling.
Jai Doherty
I am a Dual Degree Global Communications and Media student from the University of Portsmouth. I'm studying here at ECU for a year to help further my studies.
