Short-Form Videos Degrade Our Capacity to Retain Intentions: Effect of Context Switching On Prospective Memory

Abstract

Social media platforms use short, highly engaging videos to catch users' attention. While the short-form video feeds popularized by TikTok are rapidly spreading to other platforms, we do not yet understand their impact on cognitive functions. We conducted a between-subjects experiment (N=60) investigating the impact of engaging with TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube while performing a Prospective Memory task (i.e., executing a previously planned action). The study required participants to remember intentions over interruptions. We found that the TikTok condition significantly degraded the users' performance in this task. As none of the other conditions (Twitter, YouTube, no activity) had a similar effect, our results indicate that the combination of short videos and rapid context-switching impairs intention recall and execution. We contribute a quantified understanding of the effect of social media feed format on Prospective Memory and outline consequences for media technology designers to not harm the users' memory and wellbeing.

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Shorts vs. Regular Videos on YouTube: A Comparative Analysis of User Engagement and Content Creation Trends
• Making Short-Form Videos Accessible with Hierarchical Video Summaries
• Social MediARverse Investigating Users Social Media Content Sharing and Consuming Intentions with Location-Based AR
• Mind Games! Exploring the Impact of Dark Patterns in Mixed Reality Scenarios
• Seeing Your Mindless Face: How Viewing One's Live Self Interrupts Mindless Short-Form Video Scrolling