This systematic review and meta-analytic investigation comprised data from 98,299 participants across 71 studies…
Increased SFV [short-form video] use was associated with poorer cognition, with attention and inhibitory control yielding the strongest associations. Similarly, increased SFV use was associated with poorer mental health, with stress and anxiety showing the strongest associations. These findings were consistent across youth and adult samples and across different SFV platforms.
“Brainrot” they call it… it wasn’t mentioned in the article, with that the investigation wasn’t so necessary
AI Overview
“Brainrot” is an internet slang term for low-quality digital content, as well as the negative cognitive effects of excessive online media consumption, such as mental fogginess and difficulty focusing. It describes both the media itself and the mental state of a person who consumes too much of it, particularly from sources like short-form videos. The term has also been used to describe specific online trends, like Italian-language memes with absurd, AI-generated creatures
I’m suspecting spending days watching films or playing games might yield the same results. The control group is not described. It’s not clear whom to whom they were comparing, in what conditions. The conclusion looks like average academic slop too, unfortunately. It’s still not clear to me if people engage in SFV because they have lower “IQ”, or vise versa? Adding to the pile, working a dead end job will dumb you down as effectively as SFVs. To remain smart, you need to have time/energy to exercise your brain, correct?
Games are very different since they are interactive and require skill. Playing games is almost as effective as playing ping pong for your cognition.
Old people should play video games and not consume so much slop.
I’d like to see some scientific insight into this question. Ping pong may not be cognitively demanding, but it is an exercise. If it’s big tennis, then it’s a pretty intensive exercise. Games, however, do not exercise my muscles, and their value for my thinking skills I found to be very questionable. The only real difference between games and tiktok that I can pinpoint is that games arguably require you to focus a lot more. But focusing in and of itself doesn’t improve much of anything, as I see it.
And you’ll have to distinguish between the different games.
A collaborative video game where you need to have strategy and are truly interacting with others? (I have very good memories of that) or a game where you need to solve a puzzles or a game where you just shoot down everything that moves or a game where you just watch paint dry?
There are tons of games where you just have to grind through the levels without it being interesting… (unless you pay of course).
There have been some studies into these topics over the years, but the quality of the research has been mixed, and several findings have either failed to replicate, or at least weakened confidence in recent times.
There have been a few interventional studies suggesting that Tetris increases working memory, (perhaps surprisingly) language skills and other cognitive measures, as well as increasing hippocampal volume and (IIRC) white matter plasticity. Similarly, first-person shooters were reported to increase visual processing performance.
And perhaps most widely reported was dual n-back training which was reported to increase working memory and executive function.
But other research followed which failed to find benefits, especially in far transfer. In fact Tetris is often used as an “active control” condition now, when testing other interventions. So it’s hard to draw a strong conclusion, but I’d still expect game playing – which at least exercises several memory and problem-solving skills – to be of greater value to the brain than watching TikTok slop.
For any gamer it should be obvious that gaming is good for their brain as you are constantly in the flow state as opposed to tiktok/instagram/etc.
I think any gamer will tell you this. You do not need a scientific study for this.
being in a flow state doesn’t mean what you’re doing is so great per se: you can be in a flow state scrolling TikTok or working in an assembly-line doing the exact same motion for 8 hours
