Improving your Attention Span, a Guide for TikTok Fatigue

How many TikToks do you watch per day?

Let’s make a rough estimate together. Go to your ‘daily screen time’ on your phone and note how long you spent on TikTok. According to a survey collected by the Washington Post, the range for minutes on tiktok per day between ‘light users’ and ‘power users’ is between 71 minutes - 246 minutes. The average range between these two groups for time for scrolling to the next video is 13 secs - 10 seconds.

If you do the math, that means that the range of the # of tiktoks watched per day is between 320 - 1400 tiktoks a day.

And before you call cap, an hour of tiktok when you first wake up, and an hour of tiktok before you go to sleep, already takes up half of the 240 minutes.

The Intentional design of the “Dopamine Slot Machine”

Besides the biological need to belong, a student from the University of Minnesota gives us a perspective that [scrolling on TikTok] is “like a dopamine slot machine”. This describes the nature of TikTok’s recommendation engine alternating highly-currated videos and unrelated videos, so that you stay engaged. You don’t know whether the next video will be rewarding, so each scroll produces the same feelings as gambling. The proper term for this is intermittent reinforcement.

This isn’t a ‘shame post’. This behavior is encouraged by designers (or technically business goals). Companies that own these video consumption apps/sites engage in “Consumption curation practices”. This term describes the socio-technical dance engineered by designers using what’s called ‘affordance mechanisms’ to help encourage, discourage, demand, request, or even refuse choices from users; creating a frictionless feedback loop: Watch-Scroll-Repeat.¹

Shortened Attention Spans and Effects

The number of studies on the mental health effects of social media are growing, but a specific effect I do want to focus on in this blog post is attention span. A Stanford study had concluded that increases in exposure to short form video stimuli makes it difficult for people to maintain their attention span for long periods, compromising their ability to focus more precisely. This shortened attention span can impact the way you take in, retain, and talk about what you learn. This shows up IRL like:

Limited Depth of Knowledge:

The nature of algorithms promoting shorter TikToks, users swiping every 10 - 13 seconds, it's just hard to hear, let alone speak, about things in depth.

Repeated information:

On Tiktok, the same lines are used repeatedly through differnet videos on the same topic. It’s the equivalent of going to a ‘revilatized’ part of town, only to realize that half of them are coffee shops and half the stores have mid-century modern design with the cheap wood, black, and white concept.

Difficulty filtering inaccurate information:

The chances of inaccurate information is way higher, since long-form content has the space to provide context and details about how information was gathered. I don’t blame creators, if I only get 10 seconds with a mic, it’s impossible to say every disclaimer and rationale behind something.

The “Rabbit Hole” Method - A Suggested Method to Exercise your Attention Span

If you’re interested in increasing your attention span, there is a way I would recommend that could ease you into things as dense as a book. My method is to follow your interest into a ‘rabbit hole’. Let’s say you find a tiktok about a subject that you really enjoy and want to explore more.. You can ‘go a level deeper’ regarding the medium it’s served through. Let’s take Beyoncé for example:

This could help you explore longer pieces of content, and make you an expert while doing so! Next time you find yourself passionate about something, try this method to expand your source of information or entertainment, your attention span will grow with it.

Our world runs on the caffeine that TikTok scrolls provide. The data with each interaction strengthens a feedback loop so strong that you lose track of time. But with enough curiosity, you can find great gems of info in different forms, including books.