this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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It's all mind-melting in my experience
Literally proven to ruin attention span in children and essentially cause ADHD, can also easily cause depression by constantly seeing (usually) fake people flaunting their (usually) fake life and wealth.
Not to mention the proliferation of insane conspiracy theories, absolute nonsense and usually harmful 'advice' of one kind or another, 'being rich is the only thing that matters so here is a scam to show you how!' of all kinds of flavors...
Brain rot.
Please link source, interested in reading.
Having recently been diagnosed with ADHD I've taken part in several classes on ADHD to learn more about it. And the consensus is that no external factors like that cause ADHD. However, I'm sure this topic of algorithm driven addictive short form videos for a very young audience is being studied more now than ever so who knows what the consensus on that will be in the future. Causing ADHD or not, I don't think it's healthy either way.
Yeah it can certainly cause problems, it's just not ADHD.
ADHD doesn't even really mean short attention spans, it's more of the inability to willingly direct attention. It's the same way people incorrectly use "OCD" to mean liking things clean and/or orderly.
I have ADHD and I've had times where I've done the same thing for 14 hours straight (even forgetting to eat) when my brain decides it wants to latch onto that thing. You just need to be sufficiently stimulated, hence why stimulants can work as a treatment.
Both of these are the product of needing constant stimulation. I understand your point that hyper-focus is also part of ADD/ADHD, and I certainly am not going to make claims about how your brain is changing structurally without evidence behind it.
So this is mere conjecture for a mechanism:
What these apps (with short format video being the worst) do is train your brain to expect a constant stream of dopamine hits. Novelty (presumably even trash novelty like TikTok) triggers dopamine, your brain becomes dependent on that steady stream of dopamine fix, and your body starts craving it once you remove that pattern of behavior.
This is very similar to ADHD, which is also strongly connected to problems with how dopamine is regulated. It's not as simple as just not enough dopamine or poor uptake or whatever, but it's reasonably clear that it plays a role.
So both cases are a result of poor dopamine regulation causing a need for stimulation that has a negative impact on ability to function from day to day. They're probably at minimum relatively similar.
This is my understanding of it all as well. Like, if your parents never stfu as a kid or you never had a chance to really be alone and quiet and safe as a baby, your brain, your very concept of self, is hardwired for constant stimulation such that it's uncomfortable not to have it, to the point of sitting their for 14 hours reading Wikipedia pages or whatever because it's more stimulating that it would be to stop and wash the floors or so the laundry, or maybe just talking your fingers in class or letting your mind read every sign and bumper sticker while you're driving. It's also why all the most effective treatments are about emotional regulation.
I'm not going to argue if it's identical to ADHD chemically. I'm not sure we have the level of understanding of the low level mechanisms to differentiate (if it even is actually different), or even that ADHD is "one mechanism" and not a bundle of similar mechanisms of different types of disregulation with similar outcomes, because diagnosis of any mental difference is effectively all about checking boxes on patterns of behavior.
But even if there's something you can point to as clearly a distinguishing factor to say "this isn't ADHD as we've defined it", which I'm not sure you can, I'm not sure how you say they're not similar or related.
I think you misread me. I'm in total agreement with you.
No, I got you, sorry. I was just using another reply as an excuse to expand a little I guess lol.
That doesn't sound right to me. ADHD is a constellation of shared symptoms, grouped together and given a name for insurance and diagnostic purposes and because the treatment overlaps. The cause of those symptoms are obviously multifactorial, heavily correlated with both genetics and childhood stress. Bad news if your mom or dad didn't ever stfu when you were a baby, hardwired you to be uncomfortable without constant external stimulation and validation.
Schools at least where I live do a much better job of teaching kids to manage their emotions. And I hope parents of young children are doing a better job as well, seems like it to me, but I'm in a well off rural bubble.
I imagine TikTok sets back any progress and I'm glad it's banned. TikTok brain is a real thing. Human beings are meant to be able to focus intensely in one purposeful thing for several hours at a time and with practice anyone can learn to be highly productive and attentive if they can find a time and place to be free from distractions, and anyone can have a super memory if they set aside time and purposefully train their memory; memory is a product of focus.
So, perhaps 'essentially cause ADHD' is a bit strong, but there are absolutely studies that show that exposure to / addiction to short form video content impair focus, cause/exacerbate attention deficits, cause/exacerbate difficulty maintaining attention, as well as impair the ability to study and perform academically, worsen overall mental health etc.
Oh, and short form video content is also found to be addictive as well.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0144929X.2022.2151512
https://www.cell.com/heliyon/fulltext/S2405-8440(24)06377-1
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9127725/
In summary, brain rot.
Theres also studies which show, hilariously, that a good amount of mental health 'advice' on such short form content platforms is garbage.
This one studies the top posts on ADHD and finds half of them to be misleading.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/07067437221082854
And to round it out, heres a study on negative body image perception and self objectification amongst girls/women by short form content:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1740144523000876?via%3Dihub
In fairness, this study does find that negative self perception and self objectification increase with viewing either short or long form video content or images featuring 'ideal' women, which makes sense, as this sort of thing has been long studied before 'social media' even existed (TV, Magazines, Movies, etc).
So, while objectification and body image problems from media exposure are not new, the proliferation and exposure amount are increased dramatically in the age of widespread social media.
I would be willing to bet that had a similar study as this one been done on boys/men it would show similar results.
That’s a problem with many social media platforms and the “influencer” culture they host. Instagram has been particularly criticised for this.
These heavily curated content posted on these platforms does not reflect the warts and all reality of real life. People who get too engrossed in it can quickly start to feel their lives are inadequate.
I’m not sure what the solution is for this, other than trying to better regulate the algorithms used by these platforms.
Well, better regulation of algorithms is not a thing that is going to happen.
Assuming you could actually specify this kind of content... which you probably can with some degree from the standpoint of the engineers behind the things... theres basically no way to ban or limit this kind of content in a law.
1: Giant Freedom of Speech based opposition. To some extent, yeah if you penalize it, well you are limiting free speech and artistic expression, is what will be claimed.
2: Without literally having access to the way the algorithm works, it'd be a massive tome of a law to try to pass. And also software changes, so ... you can probably rewrite your way around a specific way to limit this kind of content.
I don't know. Maybe you could pass a law that mandates if your platform has x many users or daily views, you must provide to the user far, far more in depth means to manage their own content they are thrown up.
Or perhaps you could have some kind of FAA type entity created, which is supposed to be deeply involved in the behind the scenes aspects of basically standard operation of the social media industry, as the FAA is with aircraft manufacture/airspace/airports.
Of course the counter point to that is well just look at the FAA and Boeing ot even SpaceX. Regulatory capture is a thing, and with both Boeing and SpaceX it seems like the FAA (and in SpaceX's case the EPA) either don't really care to do their jobs, or actual enforcement mechanisms are just too slow or cumbersome.
Coming to lemmy has made me have more negative views of how much I use and should be using Linux.
I only have it on one device atm…
You literally are posting on a site where every 3rd post is defending genocide...
???
I must not be part of the same lemmy communities as you?
Shhh, its now time for Hasan to interview another violent religious fundamentalist to remind us that Houthis are good actually and wanton piracy is the same thing as being a good Tankie.
Don't mention that the Houthis have actually targeted Chinese vessels, and that China also has naval forces on escort and anti piracy operations faaaar from their territorial waters.
Modern American leftism has to a great extent devolved into 'any and all of America's enemies are good actually and can do no wrong'. Except Russia. Because MAGA likes Russia, so Russia bad.
Bleck.