It was the last day of school before winter break, and Aiden and his eighth-grade classmates were playing mafia. However, after the first round, one of Aiden’s friends got bored and stopped playing.
Another friend called him a “filter,” Aiden recalled, “as if your attention span is too short.”
The incident was an example of a broader trend, Aiden, one of several Scholastic Kid reporters I spoke to for this story, told me: “People are less likely to have fun and enjoy being with other people, and prefer to be surrounded by technology.”
Five years ago, the national conversation about young people and social media was dominated by concerns about cyberbullying, online harassment and body image. Today, the biggest fear among teens and adults today is arguably brain rot: the idea that social media sites, especially short-video platforms like TikTok, have eroded young people’s ability to pay attention to anything for more than a few seconds.
But as much as users of all ages seem to agree that the rise of short-form video creates problems for young people and society, few agree on a solution. Social media bans like the one that came into effect in Australia earlier this month have been met with optimism in some quarters, but many are skeptical.
“It’s not going to work,” said Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University. “Young people are going to avoid them.”
If anything, the shift to short-form video is a reminder of how difficult it is for parents and policymakers to keep up with changes in young people’s digital lives, and how difficult it can be to resolve or even identify problems that arise from a technology as ubiquitous and ever-changing as social media.
The short video revolution
It’s not your imagination: today’s young people spend more and more time watching short videos on their phones. Among kids ages 0 to 8, viewing on platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts jumped from an average of 1 minute in 2020 to 14 minutes in 2024, according to Common Sense Media, with older kids likely posting higher numbers.
Like any medium, these videos vary in quality, but they have raised particular concern from parents and researchers alike. A recent review of research on short-form videos found an association between consumption of such content and poorer cognitive performance, especially in the areas of attention and inhibitory control.
Quick videos get young people “accustomed to short content,” said Gloria Mark, a computer science professor at the University of California Irvine and author of the book. Attention Span: An Innovative Way to Restore Balance, Happiness, and Productivity. “They don’t have the cognitive stamina to be able to spend more time on the material.”
Educators routinely complain that students no longer have the attention span to read a book or listen to a lecture. “I’ve had to adjust how I cover the material in, say, a three-hour class,” Hinduja said.
These complaints are largely anecdotal, but are echoed by young people themselves. “Attention spans have decreased a lot with short content,” 13-year-old Evy told me. “If you don’t like the video, just scroll until you find another one.”
The problem of prohibiting children from accessing social networks
While most people agree that the proliferation of small videos is a problem, few agree on finding a solution. Australia’s new law, which supporters hope will combat attention loss as well as bullying and other problems, requires platforms like YouTube and TikTok to exclude users under 16. But teens quickly fled to platforms like Yope and Lemon8 that were not covered by the initial ban, leading some to fear an endless game of “whack-a-mole” as new options emerge to replace the banned ones.
Mobile phone bans in schools, which have received much positive press in the United States, have spawned their own version of whack-a-mole, young people told me. Aiden’s school in Los Angeles instituted a ban last year and is now noticing more students playing sports during lunch, he said.
But when they were deprived of their phones, children also began spending more time on their laptops, Aiden said. “They would find their way back to technology.”
Experts also worry that bans like Australia’s will prevent children from marginalized groups, such as LGBTQ+ youth, from connecting with each other or finding resources. “It will prevent young people from accessing certain information that could benefit them,” Hinduja said.
How do we solve what phones do to us?
Every adult with a smartphone knows that scrolling frequently it feels bad, but translating that sentiment into clear and workable policies, and especially targeting those policies at young people, has proven extraordinarily difficult. There isn’t even conclusive research showing that social media is bad for mental health, Mark said, in part because it’s so difficult to separate the effects of social media from the impacts of any other aspect of modern life.
But talking to kids about their phones drove home one point: Their relationships with social media aren’t all that different from ours. They get some pleasure from watching videos they like; Aiden mentioned, for example, the highlights of the sport. But they spend more time than they would like on their phones and are looking for ways to reduce it.
“When you start, you’re happy,” 13-year-old Xander told me. “But when you get excited, you’re kind of exhausted, because you think: I could have done a lot better than scrolling on my phone.”
The most effective reforms, then, might be those that apply to all of us, not just teenagers and children. Instead of age-based bans, some experts recommend broader reforms of social media platforms, such as stricter mechanisms for reporting harassment or restrictions on targeted advertising.
Leyla, 12, offered an even more radical solution: ban infinite scrolling. “I would definitely hate for them to eliminate scrolling, because I like scrolling, but it will definitely make people less addicted,” he said. In fact, a ban of this type was already proposed in the past by Republican Senator Josh Hawley.
These blanket changes would be harder for teens to get around than age restrictions, and they would also benefit us all. After all, small videos also alter our brains.
In the absence of legislation, children, like adults, have tried various tricks to stop using their phones. When Aiden and fellow Kid Reporter Sara asked their classmates about strategies to curb phone use, one of them said, “I set a 15-minute restriction on YouTube and Instagram each day to keep myself in check.” Another added: “I used to watch YouTube while doing homework. Now I give my phone to my parents while I do my work.”
Xander had advice that any psychologist would approve of: “Go for a walk, go to the gym, go to the library, do something productive,” he said. “The main reason most people use their phones is because they have nothing to do.”
And when asked how parents could help, Aiden offered a hard truth: “It’s important that they don’t use social media so much. They don’t always have to be on the phone to set an example for their kids.”