It is apt that we call algorithmically tailored social media pages a feed. For they make of us pigs: insatiably, mindlessly and choicelessly devouring whatever our overlords hurl into our troughs.

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Algorithmically driven short form content has recently come to dominate both entertainment and social media. It’s ubiquitous. And it is a noisy, brain-rotting, disheartening travesty.

Short-form content – typically videos of sixty seconds or less – was pioneered by TikTok and quickly copied by Meta (Reels) and Google (YouTube Shorts). Its rapid and easy consumption has led to mass proliferation across the internet, from Netflix to Spotify to BBC News.

Proponents argue that this format provides quicker information delivery, higher engagement, and increased creator accessibility. With due respect, they are wrong. Such a shift instead marks a degradation of our media, our minds, our culture and our attention.

Whilst I have gripes with most manifestations of short-form content, my central critique focuses on algorithmically driven, scrolling-derived short-form social-media content, which will receive the bulwark of this essay’s attention.

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The past centuries have witnessed entertainment’s evolution into increasingly condensed formats. Facilitated by a series of technologies, – the printing press, projectors, cameras, microphones, computers, the internet, the smartphone, social media, and AI – media and entertainment has been transformed extraordinarily, from the first silent film to personalised, infinite, ubiquitously accessible “short form” content.

My first encounter with the latter arrived in 2022 when I downloaded TikTok and started scrolling. Ten minutes of rapturous consumption followed until I realised that these ‘ten minutes’ had in fact been an hour. So entertaining, so effective, so personal, and so stimulating, I recognised immediately something far too powerful for me to maintain a healthy relationship with.

TikTok’s algorithm operates with a singular intention: keep people watching. Through rapidly adapting its content to user preferences, it discerns not only what you like but also what you might like. Consumer input is reduced to the most frictionless of processes: a mere upward swipe signalling tacit enjoyment. The platform tracks many metrics – the percentage of video watched, rewatch frequency, comment engagement – and then feeds these in real-time to its algorithm. With a single thumb flick, a new video is presented, selected using trillions of amalgamated inputs.

This Chinese platform’s innovation and mass market penetration quickly ‘forced’ YouTube and Facebook to create their own versions: Shorts and Reels, respectively. While I’ve abandoned Instagram and attempted to steer clear of YouTube since Shorts’ introduction, I often find myself sucked back in. Last weekend, after a week of accumulated jet lag, flu and exhaustion, I spent an entire day scrolling on YouTube shorts – 14 hours, from waking to sleep. It was, unequivocally, the most wasted day of my life.

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Such content represents entertainment in its most base and empty form. In directly stimulating our primitive, evolutionary reward circuitry, these platforms switch off the higher, more interesting part of one’s brain, – curiosity, love, empathy, knowledge, wisdom, attentiveness and reason – instead triggering the most fundamental, unthinking, lizard-like parts of our neurological architecture.

Endless scrolling without meaningful engagement coupled with expectation and instant gratification keeps people drip-fed with a precisely calibrated quantity of stimulation. Contrary to popular arguments, this content is antithetical to genuine learning and thinking.  Individual shorts may momentarily pique interest or provoke a smile, but the next video’s accessibility ensures that attention rapidly dissipates.

The content’s brevity and the attendant context switching prevent substantive information digestion. And the hyper-tailoring of content forces users into isolating silos, where they consume fundamentally different worlds of truth and languages of meaning.

Most egregiously, these platforms are extraordinarily addictive.  The user remains trapped in a cyclical loop of dissatisfaction, having their attention span shredded whilst dolefully coming back for more. The feeling that “the next short might be interesting” mirrors a gambling addict’s belief that the next bet will be the one that wins them big. It is no coincidence that the scrolling design precisely mimics the lever-pulling mechanism of a slot machine.

These platforms’ revenue models, like much of the internet, are advertising-based. Keeping eyes on screens is thus what generates maximised profit. As the adage goes, ‘If something is free, then you are the product.’ Their content and delivery methods are designed to induce a state of mollified, pacified apathy – the sweet spot exactly where advertisers want their audiences: receptive, impressionable, directly accessible, and entirely predictable.

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My recommendation is unequivocal: entirely reject such content.

Delete the apps, terminate your accounts, and create substantial barriers preventing your return. To this end, I cannot recommend this video enough. While I typically advocate for moderation, the stakes here are too high. Positioning your brain against an algorithm designed to capture attention is a losing battle.

To parents I implore you: do not expose your children to these media forms. When in Vietnam this summer, my brothers’ and I witnessed many children under two years old scrolling through TikTok and YouTube Shorts while in pushchairs – an image simultaneously absurd, hilarious, and profoundly depressing.

Whilst many emphasise the ongoing culture wars, I believe our era’s uniqueness lies in the battle for our attention. Never have our attention spans been so accessible, the capturing tools so advanced, or the stakes so high.

We often hear that “time is more important than money”, but equally true is that “attention is more important than time”.  If your time is spent with your attention continually captured by illusory and meaningless content, then what value does that time truly hold?

Your attention is the only thing that you genuinely possess. Do yourself a favour, therefore, and take proactive steps to reclaim and protect it from those seeking to capture, manipulate and exploit.

Time is ticking. And you are the only one who can stop your finite moments from silently slipping away.