I’ve been repeatedly telling my son, “No short form content,” for some time now. Instinctively, I’ve suspected that Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and the rest were a death knell for our attention span and sense of well-being, especially in our children.
I’ve stated over a dozen times how we’re not wired to handle excessive dopamine surges. The effect of this is scientifically clear: it trains the brain’s reward system to chase ever-faster hits, blunts our baseline reward sensitivity over time, and erodes self-control, which fuels compulsive checking, shorter sustained attention, and worse moods, especially in adolescents.
We’re wired to crave dopamine for survival reasons, but social platforms discovered, it’s the easiest way to keep us glued to our screens, which means more opportunities to sell and market to us.
It’s so effective, every social platform has adopted the format. The latest to enter the field is ReelShort. A streaming platform dedicated to vertically filmed, one-and-a-half to two-minute episodic bursts of programming. Imagine digesting an entire movie in two-minute chunks, each with a full story arc and cliffhanger designed to pull you into the next.
With titles like: I Had a Baby Without You, and I Flash-Married My Best Friend, it’s clear this isn’t about focused storytelling. Each episode is built to trigger instant emotions and dopamine spikes with betrayal, revelation, and shock because there is no time for buildup or depth.
It replaces thoughtful storytelling with quick emotional spikes. There is no ambiguity, long character growth, and no reflection.
Just conflict → quick resolution → reset.
ReelShort has exploded with over 50 million active users since its 2022 launch. It saw a 992% increase in downloads between 2023 and 2024, from 3.4 million to 37 million. Popular shows like “The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband” are drawing in over 400 million views.
Re-engineering Attention
We’re witnessing an entire culture being re-engineered for immediate gratification. When everything is designed to give us instant emotional payoffs, our tolerance for depth begins to die. We stop seeking stories that unfold and instead crave moments that explode. It’s why so many people can’t finish books, why films feel “slow,” and why so many of us now spend hours “bed rotting,” doom-scrolling through stimulation that never satisfies us. We’re overstimulated and addicted to the chase.
When TikTok arrived, it completely changed the landscape. Its massive success single-handedly moved every other platform to follow its lead.
Instagram = Reels
Facebook = Stories
YouTube = Shorts
All to great success. YouTube Shorts now dominates visibility, speed, reach, and volume over its long-form content. It racks up over 70 billion daily views and has even changed its monetization model to favor creators who post Shorts. Further proof that the game now values quantity over quality.
The Cultural Fallout
Short form is changing what we think a story is.
We used to sit through long, deliberate arcs that rewarded patience. Films, books, and television once relied on tension that revealed meaning over time. Long-form storytelling has trained us to hold attention, follow ideas, and interpret subtlety. Now we’re being trained to expect a payoff every few seconds.
Recent surveys show a clear shift: reading for pleasure has fallen sharply among young people, replaced with hours spent on short-form feeds. Researchers at Multitech Publisher found that Gen Z’s reading and listening habits have declined in direct proportion to their time on platforms like TikTok and Reels. In other words, the more we scroll, the less we can stay still.
Where once we prized depth, we are now addicted to immediacy.
The Human Cost
When you’re nervous system is constantly being pinged, silence starts to feel unbearable.
That’s what’s giving rise to the phenomenon known as bed rotting. People are spending hours in bed scrolling, bingeing, or existing in a fog of half-rest and half-stimulation. It isn’t laziness, it’s dopamine exhaustion.
Passive screen time tricks the brain into thinking it’s resting, but it doesn’t restore you. The American Psychological Association reports that heavy sedentary screen use is linked to higher levels of anxiety, depression, and fatigue. Prolonged passive rest increases sleep inertia, meaning the longer you lie there, the more tired you become.
It’s crazy for me to think that we used to rest to recover from life, but now we scroll to recover from scrolling.
What We Lose
The tragedy isn’t that short-form content entertains us. It’s that it redefines what our minds believe is worth paying attention to.
Depth takes patience. Understanding takes time. When both are replaced by immediacy, we lose the ability to think slowly, to hold contradictions, and to explore nuance.
We lose the art that breathes, the conversations that linger, and the meaning that comes from wrestling with ideas.
A Personal Note
I can speak to this firsthand. After years of scrolling and skimming, I tried returning to books. It was harder than I expected. I’d reach the end of a page and realize I hadn’t absorbed anything. My focus was scattered. The story was good, but my brain was out of shape.
It had grown used to immediacy. Reading demanded patience, and my mind rebelled against it. It wanted the next thing, not the deep thing.
But something happened once I pushed past the discomfort. Slowly, my focus returned. Sentences began to breathe again. My mind started to settle. That’s when I realized attention isn’t something we lose; it’s something we stop training.
A Sign of Hope
Attention is like any muscle. It can be rebuilt.
We just have to starve the algorithms long enough to remember what stillness feels like.
The real rewards in life aren’t the quick ones. They come from what demands your full attention. Whether it’s a book, a long walk, or a conversation that changes you. These are the slow burns that make us human. The slow burns that shape who we become.
And maybe, if we take the time to look up from our screens, we’ll remember that our minds weren’t built for endless stimulation. They were built for wonder.
I keep telling my son, “No short-form content,” but maybe I’m really just reminding myself.
I hate paywalls. They kill curiosity and reward clickbait. That’s why the core content here will always be free.
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Thanks for being here. Stay Curious. Question Everything.
–Luis
Great piece! Quite the frightening trend, but you are right. We can get get our attention spans out of atrophy.