What happens if we look 20-30 years into the future and think about our collective ability to think? It might all be moot given the rate of AI progress and the likelihood that most white-collar knowledge work will be done better by a sentient codebase, but let's assume humans remain in the loop enough that thinking matters. Do we have the capacity to create? Will we be purely digital content consumers, stuffing our minds with empty info calories (as we stuff our mouths with empty processed-food calories)? Can we get mental diabetes? Can we fragment our focus so thoroughly that having a coherent conversation becomes impossible? That we even know our own thoughts enough to share them...or even have them?
We are training our minds with repetition to jump from topic to topic rapidly, to never pause or process deeply, to never consolidate and weave together all the disparate information we get online. We are willingly ceding the capacity to sit still without digital stimulus, and there will be consequences. If you think you can get the correct answer from ChatGPT, why learn anything? Maybe this is the new paradigm. Maybe memorization and regurgitation to pass standardized tests (or just midterms) was always destined to die, and we had a brief spell of formalized education that allowed us to get smart enough to build microprocessors. Then the internet, then LLMs, then superintelligent AI that could self-improve...and then there is no need for learning about the Roman Empire in History class, or learning about integrals in calculus. It was never (to me) the facts you learned in school as much as the "meta" of learning how to learn, but why even learn how to learn in the future? Again, maybe this is why we are so sanguine about what is happening to young (and middle-aged) minds right now. Maybe society unconsciously knows we've already passed the Rubicon; there's no reason to fear mental incapacitation because we've booted up silicon replacement cortices and it's easy street soon enough.
If we're expected to continue to produce robust minds -- Feynmans and von Neumanns and even Musks -- we need to think about what happens if these potential geniuses are plied with short-form video from birth. This is not hysteria about "new technology" similar to fears about how bicycles would destroy society. True, focusing is not thinking, but it takes focusing deeply on an idea/topic for prolonged periods to understand and ultimately really "think" about something. If we stunt or inhibit the ability to focus, we unintentionally curtail the ability to think. This isn't theoretical. Currently, 25% of adults think they have ADHD! They do not! They have trained their minds not to be able to focus on something for more than a few minutes. What happens when we have a generation raised on short-form, not paperback books, that has never sat in a quiet room and focused on the same thing for a few hours to get an essay done or prepare for a major exam? We (adults) at least lived in a bygone era where we could just sit and read for hours or even get lost in a video game storyline or movie plot. We know what we lost, which is why we think we have a disorder (which we do not). What happens when future generations do not know what focus is? When they have never trained their minds to make slow, steady progress -- building knowledge, making connections, constructing coherent mental models to understand themselves and the world they were thrust into?
I can really only see a tragic erosion of the experience of human life. A grotesque superficialization of understanding gleaned from TikToks or YT vids gives the sensation of expertise while dropping us into Dunning-Krugerland on the peak of "Mount Stupid" -- we don't know what we don't know -- and worse, we may lose the capacity to know we don't know because we can't think deeply enough to get under the surface.
We are blindly barreling toward a nation (or world) incapable of solving its own problems, a people able only to glug down algorithmic content engaging enough to keep us locked onto a platform. We are rapidly approaching an era where, by necessity, we offload our thinking to machines (and the few string-pullers behind them). This is a bleak and terrifying future. This is not the same as calculators saving us from doing long-division by hand on paper. That saved us time. The future we're heading toward by crippling focus/thinking is one where computers save time but monumentally define reality. This is existential. We will lack the tools to know whether the machines are correct, so they will define correctness (historicity).
The confluence of short-form video and LLMs is underappreciated. We don't even have models trained on TikTok or YouTube videos yet. We will soon! And they will have the Rosetta Stone of attention capture and will generate their own videos, tuned to maximize engagement.
We like videos that titillate, pseudo-educate, or enrage...it's hard to see how fully synthetic content won't be made, either by the companies or by "creators" using the tools these platforms will produce. There is nothing good that can come from this. There is only our solution: digital discipline.
The future will be won by the few who are able to stay out of the coming deluge of addictive, mind-corrupting content. And again, the content is not really the problem. One video, no matter how catchy or viral, doesn't make a difference. What matters is the medium (the process by which the content is delivered) shaping a vulnerable mind, unsuspecting of the corrosiveness. The repeated jumps across disconnected topics, the immediate, almost violent context transitions, the flashing scenes and hypnotizing music, the lust/rage/superiority triumvirate that hook your mind, then smash it by moving to the next unrelated video. The multisensory mind traps will only get stickier. You must decide for yourself (and your kids) that it is easier to never start. If the decision is complete, there is no temptation and no cognitive load. There is no "this is my one free pass..." -- you stick with the choice and don't waste mental cycles on it. The same needs to be done for short-form as for infinite scroll feeds. The only way to keep the fangs out of you is to not let the fangs into you in the first place.
This sounds extreme, and is, but the price (digital abstention) is worth the payoff (the ability to focus/think). The few who by choice or chance avoid these digital mind-death traps will be the lonely few who can still think and see what we are becoming. Who will witness the intellectual decay on our horizon? No, posting some baby pics on IG is not a mental death sentence, but why even dip your toes in those waters? Why smoke that first cigarette? It will become exceedingly rare to read books or watch movies or write and create. But we won't have the sense of something lost (as current adults do) because it wasn't lost -- it was never present in the new generations. The few who abstain will be increasingly isolated, misunderstood, maybe feared. Something will be assumed to be wrong with those not embracing our brave digital future, and they may be like shamans (at best) or pariahs (at worst). But they will have the independence and autonomy of their minds.