How short-form videos could be harming young minds

December 18, 2025 – 3:33 PM

Image by Alex Green via Pexels

How logistics industry experts plan to ‘move forward’ after COVID-19

Reasons why Filipinos love Korean culture and products

Why Batangas is the destination for budget-friendly family holidays

These apps feel lively and intimate, offering quick routes to humor, trends and connection, yet their design encourages long sessions of rapid scrolling that can be difficult for young users to manage. They were never built with children in mind, although many children use them daily and often

alone

For some pre-teens, these platforms help develop identity, spark interests and maintain friendships. For others, the flow of content disrupts sleep, erodes boundaries or squeezes out time for reflection and meaningful interaction.

Problematic use is less about minutes spent and more about patterns where scrolling becomes compulsive or hard to stop. These patterns can begin to affect sleep, mood, attention, schoolwork and relationships.

Short-form videos (typically between 15 and 90 seconds) are engineered to capture the brain’s craving for novelty. Each swipe promises something different, whether a joke, prank or shock – and the reward system responds instantly.

Because the feed rarely pauses, the natural breaks that help attention reset vanish. Over time, this can weaken impulse control and sustained focus. A

2023 analysis

of 71 studies and nearly 100,000 participants found a moderate link between heavy short-form video use and reduced inhibitory control and attention spans.

Attention hijacked

Sleep is one of the clearest areas where short-form video can take a toll.

Many children today view screens when they should be winding down. The bright light delays the release of melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate sleep, making it harder for them to drift off.

But the emotional highs and lows of rapid content make it particularly difficult for the brain to settle. A

recent study

found that for some teenagers, excessive short-form video use is connected to poorer sleep and higher social anxiety.

These sleep disturbances affect mood, resilience and memory, and can create a cycle that is especially hard for stressed or socially pressured children to break.

Beyond sleep, the constant stream of peer images and curated lifestyles can amplify comparison. Pre-teens may internalise unrealistic standards of popularity, appearance or success, which is linked to lower self-esteem and anxiety – although the same is true for all forms of social media.

Younger children are more susceptible

Most

research

focuses on teenagers, but younger children have less mature self-regulation and a more fragile sense of identity, leaving them highly susceptible to the emotional pull of quick-fire content.

Although this content may not always be illegal, it can still be inappropriate for a child’s stage of development. Algorithmic systems learn from a brief moment of exposure, sometimes escalating similar content into the feed. This combination of instant appearance, lack of context, emotional intensity and rapid reinforcement is what makes inappropriate content in short-form video especially problematic for younger users.

Some

research

suggests a cyclical relationship, where young people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, are particularly drawn to rapid content, while heavy use may intensify the symptoms that make self-regulation difficult. Children dealing with bullying, stress, family instability or poor sleep may also use late-night scrolling to cope with

difficult emotions

Unstructured time is part of how young minds learn to soothe themselves and develop internal focus. Without it, these skills can

weaken

New guidelines

There are encouraging signs of change as governments and schools begin to address digital wellbeing more explicitly. In England,

new statutory guidelines

encourage schools to integrate online safety and digital literacy into the curriculum.

Some schools

are restricting smartphone use during the school day, and organisations such as

Amnesty International

are urging platforms to introduce safer defaults, better age-verification and greater transparency around algorithms.

Short-form videos can be creative, funny and comforting. With thoughtful support, responsive policies and safer platform design, children can enjoy them without compromising their wellbeing or development.

Katherine Easton

, Lecturer, Psychology,

University of Sheffield.

The Conversation

under a Creative Commons license. Read the

original article