Scroll Immersion and Short-Form Video: A Survey of 745 Users

There's a difference between deciding to watch one more short video and looking up twenty minutes later without having decided anything. A 2025 survey in Saudi Arabia measured both: how much people used short-form video, and how often their scrolling ran on autopilot. Both went with more trouble focusing, but the autopilot kind was the more consistent predictor.

What the researcher did

Reshaa F. Alruwaili, a psychologist at Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, published the study in Acta Psychologica in 2025. It surveyed 745 social media users in Saudi Arabia, recruited with a non-probability, quota-based sampling strategy, who completed a validated self-report questionnaire. The design was cross-sectional and correlational: everyone answered once, and the study measured use and perceived difficulties rather than running an experiment.

The survey captured two things about short-video use. One was usage frequency and duration. The other was what the study calls scroll immersion, defined as habitual and unintentional engagement, the opposite of choosing to keep watching. Using structural equation modeling, the study tested whether these predicted three difficulties people reported about themselves: attention difficulty, working memory disruption and cognitive fatigue.

What was found

• Use and immersion both mattered. Usage frequency and duration, and scroll immersion, significantly predicted these adverse cognitive outcomes.
• Immersion was the steadier predictor. Scroll immersion consistently predicted all three: attention difficulty, working memory disruption and cognitive fatigue.
• Fatigue depended on more than use. Average daily screen time and gender changed how strongly use related to fatigue; age did not.

The author's reading is that patterns of media engagement may shape this kind of cognitive strain more than demographic characteristics do, and that the findings support helping people use media intentionally and regulate it themselves.

What the study can't tell you

It can't show cause. A cross-sectional survey is a single snapshot, so it can't say whether scrolling led to the attention, memory and fatigue problems people reported, or whether people who already felt foggy and tired scrolled more, and less deliberately.

Everything was self-reported. Participants rated their own attention, memory and fatigue; nobody took a cognitive test, so these are perceptions, not measured performance. The sample was a non-probability quota from one country and may not reflect social media users elsewhere. The author calls for future studies with objective cognitive tests and longitudinal designs to work out the direction of these links and how long they last.

What it means for your phone

You don't need a diagnosis to notice the difference between watching on purpose and watching on autopilot, and this study suggests the difference matters. It wasn't only how much people watched: the habitual, unintentional scrolling was the most consistent predictor of feeling foggier and more tired.

That's what a stopping point decided in advance is for. With Shorter scroll sessions in Unrotten, you choose a session length before you start, and past it, the apps you chose take a break before they open again, so the decision to stop is made before the feed starts choosing for you. For why endless feeds are built without a natural end, read our guide to infinite scroll.