TikTok is scary: like cigarettes, the best advice would be to never start, as the perfect alignment between short format and Machiavellian algorithm seems to exist only to make you addicted. For several years now, these formats have been present everywhere, including on platforms which, basically, had nothing to do with this production. According to an article from Vox, the invasion of short videos is far from over, and that’s worrying for our poor brains.
It’s difficult to imagine an internet more saturated than today with vertical videos lasting a few seconds, and yet: we will now have to rely on those generated by artificial intelligence (AI). Poor quality content, created specifically to hold our attention, the famous content slop. Allison Johnson, tech journalist for The Verge magazine, said Google’s latest AI video generation model, Veo 3, was a creators’ dream. slop “creepy and surprisingly sophisticated”.
Before long, advertisements created with AI will be omnipresent on our smartphones, says Vox. According to Mark Zuckerberg, Meta will fully automate their creations, with the design of versions with infinite variations, which will adapt in real time to the user, and when they pay attention to them. As content driven by algorithms spreads across all our applications, it will become almost impossible to escape this type of content.
The platforms have already understood the workings of this mechanism. The easier the content is to produce, the more it multiplies, and the more likely it is to reach as many people as possible. This increased audience makes it possible to inject more advertisements, making the internet ever more addictive and ever less rewarding. The quality of content, long emphasized by platforms like YouTube, is gradually giving way to quantity. To put it simply: more content = more advertising.
A direct influence on our cognitive functions
This content is designed to attract our attention without us knowing and therefore has real repercussions on our brain and our well-being. On average, a user spends around 108 minutes per day on TikTok, more than double that of Instagram. Numerous studies show that the Chinese platform contributes to the development of stress and anxiety, particularly among younger people.
Another alarming fact is that human attention is plummeting. While in 2004 our ability to concentrate on a task was approximately two minutes and thirty seconds, today it is estimated at forty-seven seconds. For Professor Gloria Mark, researcher at the University of California, this fragmentation is not trivial: each jump in attention, from one content to another, eats away at our cognitive resources and weakens our ability to stay focused.
TikTok was born from an algorithm initially developed by viral news app Toutiao in China. The app is based on an ultra-personalized recommendation system, which is based on each of its user’s interactions: rhythm of swipelocation, battery life, everything is taken into account. This activates dopamine circuits and creates an addictive loop: anyone who has tried TikTok or the Instagram Reels feed knows how difficult it can be to get off.
