IMPACT OF WATCHING TIKTOK ON MEMORY AND ATTENTION IN ADOLESCENTS

Due to the recent rise in popularity of short-form media, especially amongst adolescents, there is little research about its possible effects and implications. This experiment aims to explore the impact of watching TikTok, in comparison to reading, on the attention capability and memory capacity of adolescent participants. In this experiment, participants watched TikTok or read a book for 7 minutes and were then required to complete sub-tasks from The Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination Version 3 (ACE-III) focused on assessing attention and memory. Ten participants (8 female and 2 male), aged between 15 and 18 years old, and who were all fluent in English, completed the assessments. Participants had lower scores on the memory tasks after exposure to the TikTok condition, but scores remained the same on attention tasks in both conditions. We found that participants expressed more difficulty answering questions and required more time to think of their answer after being exposed to the TikTok condition. This study found that watching TikTok can have a detrimental effect on the memory and attention of adolescent participants. Participants typically scored lower on the subtasks from the ACE-III examination after the TikTok condition than the reading condition and expressed more difficulty in answering questions during the TikTok condition. They required more time to think and were less sure of their answers. Further research should be carried out with larger sample size to determine the long-term effects of short-form media and test these conditions with more participants to obtain more accurate results.