Short-Form Media Undermines Teen Cognitive Skills

Watching short-form content is making adolescents score worse in their classrooms

By Laniah Bowdery

Electronic devices are everywhere. Pedestrians walk with their nose in their phones. Drivers navigate the road with devices in their hands. Young children sit with their faces on tablets instead of in books. Electronic devices provide access to everything that the world has to offer at the tip of your fingers. They bring instant gratification but they don’t provide an opportunity for learning.

Adolescents literacy rates in the United States are on a steady decline, and have been for the past 20 years according to the Nations Report Card. The shorter the content gets on our devices, the more problems are beginning to arise, especially in adolescents and how their brains work.

There is no one issue that this trend can be blamed on, but there is one that may play a larger role than many realize. Brainrot. Brainrot as defined by the Oxford Dictionary is a perceived loss of intelligence or critical thinking skills, esp. (in later use) as attributed to the overconsumption of unchallenging or inane content or material. Children and adolescents born after 1980 are considered digital natives.

Gen Z and Gen Alpha have spent their entire lives with the internet. The issue, however, lies in the kind of content and how much of this content they are consuming. Brainrot as a result of excessive screentime has bigger implications than vocabulary. It has spiraled into cognitive decline and mental exhaustion.

“The reality is that I realized in 2007 that the brain was going to change with a different medium that was disadvantaging the time the attention needs to allocate to deep reading comprehension processes,” says Maryanne Wolf, a Professor-in-Residence at UCLA’s school of education and Information Studies and an advocate for children and literacy.

Many associate brain rot, or its mental decline, with short video content on  such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. These short-form media content are meant to fit shrinking attention spans and lower levels of understanding. They include algorithms that directly target the user. The algorithm tracks what videos users like, or even linger on for longer than a few seconds, in order to curate a “for you” page. This page captures and holds users’ attention spans for as long as possible to boost engagement. A study published in 2025 in NeuroImage shows that overconsumption of short-form media can lead to changes in brain function and eventually lead to addiction to such content.

Excessive screen time is also linked to negative effects on cognitive development and health outcomes. Technology can be used as a tool to aid learning, but most adolescents are not getting those benefits. Many adolescents have unregulated access to the internet, and most platforms highlight their short form content because they know that is the best way to garner attention and keep users engaged. This leads to an almost parasitic cycle between the platform and the person using it. The person scrolls on videos that arrest their attention. They might find entertainment or even feel like they are learning new things.

The platform makes money from ads, views, and clicks. The person watching is not aware however that the more they scroll, the more issues they are likely to leave a scrolling session with. The more damage they are doing to their cognitive skills.

Add adolescents to the mix, and one can see that the connection between literacy rates, excessive screentime, and cognitive development are not that far apart. In fact, the connection between them is being explored now as new trends present themselves and test scores continue to worsen in comparison to previous years.

Research shows that literacy, comprehension, and analytical skills can all point toward a person’s cognitive skills and development. Although the research is limited on the direct correlation between media, short video media specifically, literacy, and cognitive development, these topics are connected based on how one may affect the other.

The changes that short video addiction can have on the brain are notable. Especially when you consider the fact that adolescents’ brains are still developing. The development of their brain can be stunted or even rewired by short form video content in the same way that adult brains are. The changes in brain function can lead to loss of cognitive skill and other mental and physical health issues. In adolescents this loss of cognitive skill can be traced to current test score trends. Some studies show that classroom performance can predict cognitive skills and vice versa. If something is affecting either or then it can have harmful effects on both outcomes. Other researchers agree.

“The use of social media is associated with higher rates of depression, poor body image, etc,” says Keith Robert Head, a licensed master social worker. “Then with short media specifically, we’re seeing the reduced attention or academic performance, worse memory function, and overall worse performance at school,”

In his narrative review on Short-form Video Use and Sustained Attention, Head details that there is various literature out there that point to connections between short-form video use, memory, attention, behavior, and academic performance. Adolescents are particularly at risk because their brains are still developing.

All of these issues point to the same thing. While excessive screen time can have an impact on the brain, it is specifically this short-form content that has the worst effect. With falling literacy rates, attention spans, and cognitive skill, adolescents are at risk for longer term effects. Poor attention spans can have various effects on health. A shortened attention span can lead to anxiety, depression, and health decline due to health neglect and forgetfulness. Cognitive decline can impact thinking, communication, and reasoning. All of which can impact quality of life.

Children and adolescents are changing the way that their brain functions while it is already in the middle of development. These changes are bound to have adverse effects on their growth and further development.

Increased social media use is also associated with a more sedentary lifestyle. A sedentary lifestyle is one with a lot of sitting, resting, and inactivity. Living sedentarily can have its own consequences on mental and physical health. Studies show that teens who use social media in excess are more likely to live sedentary lifestyles. When you factor in short-form media and what it does to the attention, it is likely that it also has an effect on teens’ health habits.

“A lot of people are looking at it from a cognitive aspect, and that’s brilliant, but I think we look at the addictive traits of these platforms,”  says Nicholas Barton, an assistant psychologist for the National Health Services in the United Kingdom.  “The way they have been produced has had absolutely no concept and no welfare for the actual impact they’re going to have.”

Barton worked specifically with short-form videos and their impact on prospective memory. His research indicates that there might be parts of the brain more impacted than others. While people are looking at the short-term reversible effects, there may be other long-term or even beneficial effects when used appropriately.

“We have a plastic reading brain circuit. That means it’s going to reflect its environment. And if its environment, as a medium, is largely social media, TikTok, you’re going to have the brain learn to move its attention like that so much it becomes what it does when it reads,” says Wolf.

Brainrot might just seem like a silly term, but in reality it has much bigger implications. Understanding how menial short form content impacts adolescents and their brains is important when teens spend about 5 hours each day on social media. Higher usage of social media and short form content equals more issues in teens daily life, and later down the line.

These social media platforms are not going anywhere anytime soon despite attempts to ban them in the United States. Parents and adolescents must learn how to adapt as a result. A person’s interactions with social media, and how they use it largely affects how they interact with other aspects of life. The impact on the brain creates a spill over effect. This effect, however, is understudied.

“I think we need more research in the U.S. especially with students. It’s easy to say that these children, or adolescents are having ADHD or issues but it’s not being investigated for the media usage that could be impacting them,” says Head.

These trends are easy to track, but are not as well researched in the United States. A lot of the research is theoretical or involves combinations of multiple studies and examples of literature. Researchers need to place more focus on making the connection between literacy rates, short-form media, and cognitive development in adolescents. Their brains are still developing and are thus more impressionable to the negative effects of short-form media. There are limitations to this research however.

Gaining approval from the institutional review board for studies involving children is always a more difficult and extensive process because they are a vulnerable population. In addition, just because the research is done does not mean that changes will be made. This research would be just the beginning in a long road of studies to figure out the exact connection between short-form media and brain development in adolescents. It does not guarantee that social media platforms would make the necessary changes to protect growing brains.

Until further studies are done, the work lies with parents, guardians, and community members to ensure that children and adolescents are receiving proper mental stimulation. There should be an emphasis placed on the amount of reading, comprehension, and analytics exercises done at home and in school. The benefits outweigh the negatives even if the negative effects of short-form media content are said to be small.

The problem is not permanent either. Children and adolescents can take back control of their brains through various practices if they notice their attention span becoming a little shorter or inability to comprehend topics that were once easy. Everything is okay in moderation, and short-form media content is definitely one of those things.

Short-form media is not the only cause of brain rot, or falling literacy rates. The Covid-19 pandemic, economic status, and other situations can also have an impact on measurements of cognitive development and growth in adolescents. This media use is one that has the least amount of studies, and must be researched in connection with other issues to make sure that children and adolescents have a bright future ahead of them in face of other challenges.