Research on short-form videos and cognition is difficult to conduct. Studies on human subjects tend to be slow and expensive, and academics are wary of spending years investigating apps that could be irrelevant by the time their results are published. Plus, the federal government hasn’t prioritized funding research on potentially addictive behaviors, including gambling and social-media use. The industry could help fill in the gaps by funding or even leading research, especially given that American social-media platforms have exclusive and valuable data. But companies are not particularly motivated to bankroll research that could show detrimental effects of their wildly profitable products. So far, they have largely chosen to keep internal research private.
(Data points do creep out. In 2024, for instance, a sloppily redacted complaint in a lawsuit against TikTok revealed some of the company’s internal research, which allegedly found that compulsive usage of the app “correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, and increased anxiety.” At the time, a spokesperson for TikTok argued that the documents were outdated and that the quotes in the complaint had been cherry-picked.)
What can be done when there is just no one organization with the wherewithal or willpower to take this type of research on?
Replace fluoride in drinking water with LSD. Then you don't need tiktok.
That sounds risky. Can we be sure it has the desired effect?
Don't know. It needs experimentation so we can find out.
I feel like I'm seeing this increasingly in the college age student population
📯🍄✨🍄✨
psychopathy can be eliminated, naturally or unnaturally; methods are countless, the objective is oneness with it all; a psychedelic meme-reel can help too;