No.
The study found a correlation between people who regularly consume short-form content and those who scored low on tests measuring impulse control and attention span.
If you have less self control, you’re more likely to consume more short-form video content (duh). But correlation is not causation and the study is not proving that more short term video content is causing less self control. It probably is, but that’s not the finding of the study as the title and some of the quotes imply.
Neither does impulse control and attention span imply anything about intelligence. Framing it like this is kinda offensive to the many smart people who have a flavour of adhd.
Previous science regarding gaming habits of young kids concluded that those that gamed more then x hours a day had improved problem solving skills, cognitive skills and also lower attention span.
When we’re talking science, if you have a certain flavour of adhd which makes you less intelligent, it still makes you less intelligent. Nothing to be ashamed of, and of course the ways they define and test for intelligence are often questionable. But worrying about offending people or making test score equitable goes against the principles of objective science.
There is no flavour of adhd that does this, their intelligence spans the same ranges as any other people. But they do have a lower attention span which is why I referred to them.
The article literally refers to “lower measured attention span” as “being dumber” and thats just unapologetically incorrect. There is no indication of a proper IQ tests being involved.
That said there are so many different kinds of intelligence that we don’t measure or have tests for, being bad a one that does have tests is indeed nothing to be ashamed for, you are correct on that part.
There’s a lot of people here unable to recognize how important attention span is for deep, meaningful learning.
Way too many people saying “ATTENTION SPANS NOT INTELLIGENCE DUHMASSES” and failing short because they don’t have the attention span to think of implications of decreased attention span.
Long term memory is built on repetition and attention. It is entirely plausible that short form media makes you stupider - by impacting your ability for deep learning
Imagine if your computer was extremely high spec, but could only run any process for a maximum of about 20 minutes. That would be… Just awful.
That being said, it looks like this study is pretty flawed.
It started way back in the days of cable. I remember how jarring it was to see a music video on MTV that kept changing camera shots. I was like, “you don’t even get enough time to get a good look at the band or the scene.” Then it got worse, way worse.
They have been programming people for short attention spans forever now and I hate it.
They did not in fact find that the shorts are making you dumber. They said it affects your attention span.
Ironically I found this out in the first sentence of the article and then stopped reading.
Wouldn’t the knock-on effects of a reduced attention span pretty much look like ‘dumber’?
Intelligence is intelligence you can’t reduce it by watching cat videos
Yeah I can’t imagine it making me dumber. Most of my shorts are interesting scientific facts/discoveries. Or CSS tips and tricks.
Attention span I can definitely believe.
This may shock you, but most people watch really dumb fucking shit instead of scientific facts.
Then they were already dumb.
Short attention span correlates with low intelligence but short attention span doesn’t cause low intelligence.
I can’t remember the whole thing but there is a sort of pseudo research paper that got published exactly to demonstrate the difference between correlation and causation. In the paper they “found” that yellow teeth cause cancer.
Of course smoking causes yellow teeth, and cancer. The yellow teeth are correlated, but do not cause.
You could do this with anything. Most cancer patients spend a lot of time indoors (hospitals) => being indoors now leading cause for cancer!
Statistical correlation is very useful if used correctly — to lead you where to do proper technical research and not quantitative research. 👍
They would do so with short and long content either way.
50 people is an irrelevant sample size. Just because the findings seem to make sense doesn’t mean the study is good.
So do stupid fucken click bait headlines.
They said the same thing about Sesame Street in the 1970’s
I turned out all right.
WOW! 3 downvotes for saying I’m all right.
And no stated reason. Could be a troll farm. A Russian troll farm, or maybe a Christian troll farm. They don’t like me thinking too. It might be my EX, we still don’t get along.
I could even be Nestlé. My DECADES-long boycott is finally working.
