Short-form videos have become one of the dominant ways young people engage with social media. These are clips lasting seconds up to a few minutes, driven by personalized algorithms that are deeply immersive and precisely tailored to users’ interests, with endless autoplay and infinite scroll providing no stopping cues. These feature-driven clips are standard in platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, and are designed to keep attention locked in. This design matters because it encourages repeated, often automatic engagement. Users don’t need to decide what to watch next, as the platform decides for them. Over time, this may shape how attention, mood, and motivation are regulated, especially in children and adolescents whose brains are still developing.
As concern grows about the mental health impacts of social media, researchers have increasingly turned their attention to short-form video. A recent systematic review and meta-analysis by Nguyen and colleagues pulled together 70 studies to examine how this type of content use is linked to mental health, cognition, and well-being. Rather than focusing on a single study, meta-analyses pool results across many studies to better understand overall effects and who is at greatest risk.
What the Research Really Says About Short-Form Video Use
Across the studies included in the review, higher levels of short-form video use were consistently associated with poorer mental health outcomes, particularly among adolescents and young adults.
The most commonly reported associations included:
Higher symptoms of negative mood, depression, stress, and anxiety.
Higher levels of loneliness and lower emotional well-being.
Greater risk of problematic or compulsive use.
Lower sleep duration (sleep quality was not measured often).
Importantly, these associations were strongest when use was frequent, emotionally driven, or felt difficult to control, patterns that reflect how and why young people engage with these platforms, not simply how long they use them.
Beyond mental health, this review also examined how short-form video use relates to cognitive functioning, including executive functioning abilities that are critical for success in school and work. Across studies, a consistent pattern emerged, particularly in young people: heavier and more compulsive short-form video use was linked to poorer cognitive outcomes.
Across studies, heavier and more compulsive short-form video use was associated with:
Poorer attention.
Poorer self-regulation and impulse control.
Poorer language abilities.
Poorer cognitive reasoning abilities.
Poorer working memory.
The fast-paced, highly stimulating, and repetitive nature of short-form video may make it harder to focus on slower, effortful tasks and place additional strain on developing cognitive systems.
Why Short-Form Video May Be Especially Impactful
The review highlights that short-form video platforms incorporate many features known to increase high and compulsive use. Each swipe delivers unpredictable content, which may contribute to reward-based patterns of repeated engagement and make it harder to disengage. Moreover, the brief, rapid nature of these videos viewed frequently over time may impair the ability to sustain attention for slower, more effortful tasks (e.g., schoolwork), tolerate boredom, or delay gratification. High use also imposes a strong cognitive load on the brain that can have an adverse impact on cognition, a mechanism known as the Digital Stress Hypothesis.
High use of short-form videos appears to displace sleep, which is vital for maintaining strong cognition and mental health during the teen years when the brain is still developing. High use may also displace other mental health- and cognitive-promoting behaviours such as physical activity, spending quality time with friends and family, spending time in nature, and/or pursuing hobbies, leisure pursuits, and self-development activities.
For some young people, frequent exposure to highly curated or emotionally charged content may also intensify social comparison or negative self‑evaluation, further impacting mood and self‑regulation. These mechanisms help explain why excessive short‑form video use is linked with poorer mental health, even when overall screen time is similar.
One of the key messages from this research is that the pattern of short-form video use, and your relationship with it, may matter as much as total time spent. For example, problematic use had stronger associations with poorer cognition and mental health compared to total duration alone. This finding has also consistently been shown in the broader social media literature. This means that for those who show signs of problematic use, such as inability to reduce use or stop, maintain high use despite negative consequences, feel irritable or anxious when prevented from using, or whose high use interferes with academic, social, or family relationships, they are at increased risk of harms.
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What This Means for Youth, Parents, and Clinicians
The results suggest that short-form video platforms pose meaningful risks to youth mental health and cognition during adolescence, a particularly vulnerable period in development. The results highlight the danger of these videos and underscore the need to reform the platforms’ designs and algorithms to protect youth well-being and cognition, as well as undertake measures to limit use and exposure. Several countries, such as Australia and the United Kingdom, have imposed bans on social media for teens under 16 years of age, with other countries considering the same measures.
Young people can experiment with small, achievable adjustments that protect attention, mood, and self‑regulation. Helpful options include:
Turning off autoplay to increase the ability to stop.
Setting intentional scrolling windows (e.g., 10 to 15 minutes) rather than open‑ended browsing.
Moving short-form video apps off the home screen to increase friction and reduce automatic opening.
Charging phones outside the bedroom to limit nighttime use and protect sleep.
Curating the feed by actively removing content that increases stress, comparison, or emotional reactivity.
Replacing default downtime scrolling with alternative micro‑breaks (music, stretching, messaging a friend).
Noticing “why” they open the app: Boredom? Loneliness? Habit? And then trying to choose a healthier response when possible.
Parents can support healthier digital environments without relying solely on restriction. Strategies include:
Talking about feelings, not just rules: asking, “How do you feel after scrolling?” or “What kinds of videos make things better or worse?”
Creating family norms around tech (e.g., device‑free meals, shared charging stations).
Helping youth identify triggers for compulsive scrolling—stress, procrastination, loneliness, or emotional overwhelm.
Encouraging co‑viewing or occasional “feed check‑ins” where youth show what types of videos they’re seeing.
Modeling balanced use, as kids notice if adults also struggle to put down their phones.
Using built‑in device controls together rather than imposing them (“Let’s try this limit for both of us this week.”).
Given that digital habits are modifiable and meaningfully linked to mental health and cognition, clinicians can incorporate short-form video use into routine assessment and intervention. Options include:
Screening briefly for problematic use, including difficulty stopping, sleep disturbance, emotional reliance, or impairment in school/relationships.
Asking functional questions, such as: “What need does scrolling meet for you?” or “What happens when you try to stop?”
Providing education about reward loops, attention strain, and developmental vulnerability in adolescence.
Integrating digital‑use goals into treatment plans (e.g., reducing nighttime use, adjusting feed content, experimenting with limits).
Supporting parents with guidance on fostering collaborative, non‑punitive discussions about digital behaviour.
Monitoring related domains, such as sleep, mood, anxiety, social comparison, and attention—areas consistently linked to heavier short-form video use.
Referring to specialized supports (e.g., strategies for digital overuse) when problematic patterns are present.