Effect of Short-Form Videos on Student Attention

Short-form videos (SFVs) have recently emerged as one of the most prominent forms of entertainment content on social media, attracting huge audiences across platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. This study explores the potential effects of short-form entertainment content on cognitive functions, especially learning-related ones. We conducted an experimental study to investigate the immediate effects of SFV consumption on student learning. During the experiment, volunteers engaged in two learning tasks; they avoided watching SFVs for three hours before the first learning task and watched 15 minutes of SFVs before doing the second task. The SFV content viewed by subjects was personalized and recommended to them by their own Instagram algorithm to ensure real-world relevance. Subjects wore a Pupil Core eye-tracking device during the experiment. Subjects’ eye measures were monitored and analyzed in pre- and post-experiments to gain insight into the immediate neurophysiological effects of using Instagram on learning performance. Our findings revealed that watching SFVs negatively affects the subject’s pupil diameter, which implies reduced attention and processing load. This negative effect gradually decreases over time, and its dissipation can be modeled with an autoregression and space-state model. The study highlights that watching short entertainment videos before study sessions can impair the learning process. It could be beneficial for students to incorporate guidelines that regulate short-form video consumption before learning activities.