SFV is the worst for your brain. Chiossi et al. (2023) clearly demonstrated this. They showed that 10 minutes of TikTok reduced prospective-memory task performance by ~40%, while Twitter and YouTube (a single 10-minute video) did not. This points to the insidious mix of rapid scene cuts, unpredictable novelty, and disorienting attention residue stacking up as we try to process a new narrative every ~30 seconds.
Prospective memory is essentially remembering a cue and an execution plan while doing other tasks simultaneously. It’s a decent proxy for real-world focused execution, where errands or interruptions keep you from honing in on one task. In the real world we operate with subprograms running in the background while we tick off a task list.
The study showed that TikTok uniquely corrodes the ability to reactivate and execute a previously planned task after a 10-minute SFV interruption. But watching 10 minutes of YouTube or reading 10 minutes of a Twitter timeline had no negative effect. The paper didn’t explain why TikTok is worse than Twitter, only that it is fundamentally different. And you already know this first-hand. It zaps your mental circuitry.
Rapid context switches may overload working memory, essentially flushing anything you were thinking about before your TikTok session. Your mind can’t remember the goals you started with because memory storage was partially and poorly overwritten by low-value clips. You accumulate attention residue with every new video -- your mind keeps processing the last one while the next floods you with input and disrupts encoding. It’s contextually disconnected, meaning a new set of circuits must activate to make sense of each clip. You stack these partial memories and activations so high that you crush the capacity to recall something from 10 minutes ago. Truly -- think back to your last TikTok session and try to remember what you watched. You probably can’t. You basically “Men in Black” neuralyzed yourself -- voluntarily! TikTok doesn’t just store incoherent fragments -- it also wipes the goals/plans/intentions you had before opening the app. It is truly a mind destroyer.
Add to this the Dopamine Slot Machine effect: prediction-error dopamine spikes that SFV algorithms maximize hijack reward circuits and downshift prefrontal control, taking planned tasks offline. Bottom-up dopamine circuits blunt the top-down, goal-oriented wiring needed to focus and complete less “novel” tasks.
Your focus can’t survive even a 10-minute exposure. You’re cooked. Would 1 minute fry your circuits just as badly? Probably not -- but where is the safe dose? This paper didn’t answer that. We have proof that 10-minute mini-binges derail you, and if a simple interruption takes knowledge workers ~23 minutes to recover from, how long to recover from a 5- or 10-minute TikTok run with phasic dopamine bursts that deplete tonic stores needed for vigilance? It will be more than 23 minutes (a non-dopamine interruption) and might be hours (to resynthesize and restock dopamine in presynaptic vesicles). And further: how long to recover from repeated 5–10 minute sessions throughout the day? The average 13- to 34-year-old has 5–20 sessions per day of this length on TikTok. And how long to recover from a 2-hour mega-binge?
If we renamed TikTok “Neuralyzer” it would be more honest. We’re repeatedly wiping goals from our minds every time we use this app for 10 minutes (maybe even 5). Without goals you cannot focus. Without goals you cannot reach your potential.
So, given the perniciousness of SFV, how can I post 30–60 second clips on TikTok, knowing I’m contributing to algorithmic atrophy? That’s easy -- Willie Sutton’s line: he robbed banks “because that’s where the money is.” I use TikTok to spread the word about Goldmind and the harms of SFV because that’s where the people are who need to hear it. The people watching are the people being changed by SFV -- how better to speak to them? I try to make informational videos without cheap dopamine tricks, and it reduces reach -- but you won’t reach these people with newspaper ads. You go where the audience is and give a compelling reason to reconsider their SFV consumption. The ends (reaching and helping) justify the means (using SFV to reach).
I’m trying to use the tool against itself -- hoping a clear, comprehensible message about SFV’s dangers resonates with people using it detrimentally. And per Chiossi, that likely includes anyone who uses it >10 minutes per session.
I want to help people make their performance match their potential. I want Goldmind and every product we create to help people use their minds fully to achieve their goals. If I have to make 30-second clips explaining why 35-year-olds didn’t suddenly develop ADHD but are being harmed by SFV, so be it. The end here -- helping someone understand SFV is not benign and is doing something to minds -- justifies adding content to TikTok.
As long as I provide information ethically and candidly about SFV -- even noting my videos contribute to a harmful process -- I will use SFV. The beast has to be confronted head-on. Pretending it’s worse to use the current dissemination tool to expose its harms than to reach no one by blogging (which I do -- and few read) or by infomercial (which no one would watch) is ridiculous. You rob banks because that’s where the money is. You go to TikTok because that’s where the minds are that are being warped. And you do your best to start the process of unwarping -- or at least to make people aware of the warping. It’s not what I’d like to be doing; it’s what I feel is necessary to have any positive impact.
In reference to: Francesco Chiossi, Luke Haliburton, Changkun Ou, Andreas Martin Butz, and Albrecht Schmidt. 2023. Short-Form Videos Degrade Our Capacity to Retain Intentions: Effect of Context Switching On Prospective Memory. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 30, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580778