Short-Form Video and Attention: A Meta-Analysis of 71 Studies

Does an evening of TikTok, Reels and Shorts leave your focus in pieces? A team at Griffith University in Australia pulled the studies on short-form video and health into one analysis, and the strongest link they found was with attention.

What the researchers did

The review, led by Lan Nguyen, was published in Psychological Bulletin in 2025, with its plan registered in advance. It pooled 71 studies covering 98,299 participants. Most of the studies were of adults (73%) and most were run in Asia (74%); the average participant was about 23.

The studies measured short-video use in different ways. Most used questionnaires about compulsive, "addictive" use (52%); others asked about time spent, how often people opened the apps or how attached they felt to them, or simply whether they used them at all. About half the studies looked at TikTok; the rest at short videos in general.

The researchers then combined the results into average correlations: how strongly heavier use goes together with poorer scores on measures of thinking and mental health.

What they found

• Attention and self-control. In the 14 studies that measured thinking skills, heavier short-video use went with poorer cognition overall, a moderate correlation (r = -0.34). The strongest links were with attention (r = -0.38) and inhibitory control (r = -0.41), the ability to hold back an automatic response. The links with memory, working memory and language were weak, and there was none with reasoning.
• How you use it matters. Poorer cognition went more with compulsive use than with plain time spent, which showed only a weak link.
• Mental health. Across 61 studies, heavier use went with somewhat poorer mental health (r = -0.21), most clearly with stress (r = -0.34) and anxiety (r = -0.33). There was no link with body image or self-esteem.
• The pattern held for young people and adults alike, and for TikTok as well as short videos in general.

In plain terms, a correlation around 0.4 is moderate: heavier users tended to score worse on attention, with plenty of overlap between people.

What the study can't tell you

It can't say what causes what. Most of the studies were correlational, a snapshot taken at one point in time, and the authors are explicit that the direction can't be inferred. People who already find it hard to focus, or who are stressed, may be drawn to short, easy videos, rather than the videos causing the problem. Both could be true at once.

The studies also differed a great deal from one another, most measured use with questionnaires rather than the phone's own logs, and most samples came from Asia. The review mainly searched English-language sources, so research published elsewhere may be missing. And only a handful of studies looked at memory or reasoning at all.

What it means for your phone

You don't need a perfect study to run a sensible experiment on yourself. If your attention feels thinner than it used to, short-form video is a good place to start.

• Watch the pull, not just the minutes. The links were stronger with compulsive use than with time spent, so notice when you open these apps without deciding to.
• Keep short videos away from focused work. Don't start a scroll just before you need to concentrate.
• Put an end on the feed. An endless feed has no natural stopping point, so give it one.

That last idea is what Shorter scroll sessions does in Unrotten: you set a session length, and past it, the apps you chose take a break before they open again. For what the wider research says about focus, read our guide to attention span.