The association between short video addiction and perceived writing competence among Chinese EFL learners: the mediating role of decreased attention control and learning burnout

The cognitive patterns of the teenagers have been reshaped by the digital era through pieces of information and instant responses. According to the Goldilocks hypothesis, there might be a non-linear relationship between the use of digital media and learning outcomes. This study mainly focuses on the part of excessive usage, which is the addiction to short videos. The risks it brings, such as distraction and poor working memory, may pose a unique threat to the learning tasks that require a high level of cognitive engagement. Although there is an increasing number of scholars have investigated the relationship between short video addiction and students' learning performance, few studies focusing on the relationship between these two variables in the context of English as a foreign language. Therefore, the present study seeks to propose a model for predicting how students' short video addiction is related to their English writing task. Participation in the study was 559 Chinese university students. The results of structural equation modeling revealed that short video addiction was significantly negatively correlated with students perceived writing competence; among them, both decreased attention control and English-learning burnout played the mediating roles in this relationship. These findings reveal that addiction to short videos beyond the "optimal range" is associated with the depletion of cognitive and emotional resources and is linked to lower perceived English-writing competence, providing important insights for educators to enhance students' writing competence by intervening in attention control and learning burnout.