Attention Atrophy

Oct 26, 2022

And then my friend goes: “Oh, you’re looking for recommendations for Lisbon? Just go on TikTok!” What?! Why would I do that? I was baffled. I was going to search Google but he continued to look at me like I was 100 years old.

I have nothing against TikTok content per se, but I think we should all be concerned about short-form video content causing us to lose our patience to the point where watching a good movie, immersing ourselves in a book, or even having a deep conversation with a friend all become harder and less enjoyable.

I don’t have a TikTok account. I tried the app a few times and decided it’s not for me. Don’t get me wrong, using it was actually super enjoyable, maybe too enjoyable, like enjoying a 20-piece box of McNuggets. Yet, I’ve been trying to be more conscious of how much time I’m spending on my phone. And after trying TikTok for 15-20 minutes I could immediately see how I might spend hours on it. For me this sparked immediate resistance.

But despite feeling my resistance is justified (and I’ll get to why in a minute), I‘m not 100% sure I should act on it. You see, back in the 90s I remember talking to my dad about the internet. I remember being really excited about what this new technology might bring. But more so, I recall my dad being somewhat reluctant to share my excitement, thinking the internet is just another fad or a nice hobby for computer kids. And here we are, it’s 30 years later and now I’m the one resisting a new technology. And not just any new technology, I’m resisting using a new search engine that is used in over 150 countries by over a billion people. And yes, it’s addictive, but is it significantly more addictive than using Google?

In 2010, Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham predicted that “the world will get more addictive in the next 40 years than it did in the last 40”, and that all of us will have to be increasingly careful choosing how to coexist with what the future will bring. What I found most interesting about his prediction was that given all these new addictions he described 2 “senses” in which one will be able to live a normal life.

“one sense of "normal" is statistically normal: what everyone else does. The other is the sense we mean when we talk about the normal operating range of a piece of machinery: what works best”

When I consider what’s my desired “normal” way of being, I think of myself more as a piece of machinery than a statistical data point meant to fit into an average state of being. Just like a machine has its function which if it doesn’t perform we consider it unreliable or broken, so I consider my top 2 functions to be learning and connecting with other people. YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter are all addictive to an extent. So why am I stressing about short-form video content? For me, It’s a matter of friction reduction and feed optimization, which together pose a risk to my sense of normal.

The Blessing Of Friction

It’s not that I think TikTok content is bad. As a matter of fact I think it’s really good. What I fear is the delivery method. Through the years we’ve dramatically minimized the friction of switching between content we want to consume. If you didn’t like what was written on a physical newspaper you probably had thrown it away. Since then, we have 3+ news apps we constantly switch between, and now it turns out a quarter of US adults regularly get their news from TikTok. In the movie theater, it’s only in extreme cases that we decide we don’t like what’s playing that bad that we get up and leave in the middle (I only recall doing this once). With TV it’s easier, less friction clearly, but we still have to agree with the people who might be watching with us that it’s time to change the channel (who am I kidding, channel?)

With short-form video content we’ve minimized the friction so it’s barely visible. You really only need a functioning finger and you’re ready to go. Within just minutes you’re exposed to dozens of creators. Think about this for a second, within minutes you consume dozens of videos! It would be like instead of Google prioritizing top search results for us it would force-feed us 3 pages worth of results and call it a success. While this experience is without a doubt entertaining, we must ask ourselves why we are using it, and what are the potential side effects?

It is normal that when new things are introduced to the world we often cannot predict what will become of them, what the long-term effects might be. This is one aspect that makes innovation exciting. What could be the potential side effects of using TikTok? While still we cannot say for sure, I think we can use common sense to make an educated guess but also prepare ourselves to notice how TikTok might change us.

The reduction of content switching friction promotes a reality where we are less and less able to immerse ourselves in the content we consume, and instead consume it for the purpose of entertainment. After using TikTok, how can we expect to have patience to read a book, or have a meaningful conversation with a friend? After all, ask yourself what is really most entertaining about TikTok if not the constant context switching? I wish us all luck maintaining that rhythm when helping out a friend with a work problem or a relationship crisis.

TikTok Compression Is Flawed

If TikTok just included 30 second chunks of original longer videos then it wouldn’t be that interesting. The whole point of this medium is that in 30 seconds the creators are compressing more content than usually acceptable. Pretty much like rushing through the disclaimers at the end of a health insurance commercial.

But unlike mentioning disclaimers super fast in order to comply with legal policies, let’s think what should we consider a successful compression outcome. A successful compression process should help distill the true essence of an object. Again, Paul Graham said it better.

Paul Graham @paulg

When you compress something sufficiently, you discover its essence. Conciseness has many advantages, but that is the greatest.

Ideally we should be able to unpack (decompress) the object and retrieve its original form. Just like when we moved from CD players to mp3, songs still sounded similar (if not better) while taking less storage space. Imagine mp3 players only played song vocals and dropped everything else.

From my experience with short-form video content, through the compression process much of the informational aspects are lost, and one main aspect always remains and is even optimized. That is the sensational aspect of the content. Above being useful or true or even creative, the feed promotes sensational content over anything else.

Prioritizing sensational content is not bad by definition, yet we should ask ourselves why would we want to use a search engine that prioritizes sensational results. The truth is often anything but sensational, and requires patience to uncover. With a recommended video length of between 21 and 34 seconds, let’s consider my Lisbon trip search. What content is likely to rise to the top of the search results? It won’t be the most useful or even interesting recommendation. Actually the prioritization will have very little to do with the underlying content. The video that would get the most impressions will be the most exciting one, both in terms of sounds and visuals. It’ll be the most sensational video. Think about that when considering a video about a recipe or a DIY project. Is this medium really conducive to learning new things?

You Are The Ultimate Judge

I’ve used quite a few question marks in this article, and that is no accident. There’s a lot we don’t know yet. Maybe my resistance is justified, maybe I’m just getting old. I wonder how I would view the internet today if I first heard of it.

New technology is exciting, and by trying out new things we test our own boundaries and understand ourselves better. I think the takeaway from all of this is not to avoid such platforms, but to be conscious of the reason we’re using them, and more importantly the potential side effects of that usage. Personally, I plan to leverage short-form video content wherever I think makes sense for me. I did end up searching for Lisbon recommendations and got a bunch of results, some more useful than others. But I’ll let you be the judge (see a few of the results below). So while I experiment further my main desire is to remain conscious. What about you? Have you been consuming short-form video content and noticed any changes in your state of “normal”?

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