Scientists have stated the harm of short videos for memory and learning
Scientists from Yunnan Pedagogical University and Central China Pedagogical University have found that short videos, a format typical of social networks, are significantly worse at supporting learning and memorization than long videos. This was reported in the magazine on June 4. Phys.org .
More than 150 students participated in three consecutive experiments. Everyone was shown videos about little-known tourist destinations. One group watched videos lasting 10 minutes, the other — from 30 seconds to 2.5 minutes. Some of the participants were explicitly instructed to memorize the content, while the rest watched without any special instructions. All the scans took place in an fMRI scanner, which recorded brain activity through changes in blood flow.
"Participants trained with short videos demonstrated significantly lower accuracy of immediate information reproduction under both encoding conditions and a higher rate of forgetting when instructed to memorize," the authors reported.
At the neural level, short videos reduced synchronization in areas of the brain responsible for spatial attention, episodic memory, and cognitive control—in particular, in the superior parietal lobule, preclinium, and middle occipital gyrus. At the same time, they recorded increased synchronicity in the temporal and frontal areas associated with the bottom-up response to external stimuli. The functional connectivity between visual, attentional, and control networks was weakened when watching short videos.
The authors explain the effect by the fragmented nature of short videos: rapid content change engages primitive attention-grabbing mechanisms, displacing deep information processing necessary for long-term memorization. The researchers recommend that educators take this data into account when designing digital learning environments and give preference to longer formats.
The growing popularity of short videos in the educational environment has been traced since the spread of vertical scrolling platforms. According to previous research, users on average spend less than a minute on a single video when watching on social networks.
A popular trend has become on TikTok, in which users generate short vertical cartoons using artificial intelligence, where anthropomorphic fruits and vegetables experience exciting love dramas. Piquant videos are created by users all over the world, overlaying the generated voiceover in different languages.
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