What on Earth happened to our attention span? Marketers used to say that you have 3 minutes to hold someone’s attention (when trying to sell them something). Now it appears that’s just 3 seconds. The question is, are short videos poison or treasure?
Yep, getting a teenager to put down their phone is difficult, and Chinese people love to say, “不要看手机” (Don’t look at your phone) to their offspring, usually while looking at their phone. It’s a phenomenon which is truly multi generational.
Huang Qituan is a senior psychology tutor in the business for 22 years and founder of One Psychology. He has written of a message received from one of his social-media followers; “My daughter is only 2-years old, but she asks me to turn on her phone every day. She wants to watch Douyin, and won’t let go even during Spring Festival. I feel that it is too young to be addicted to the internet and she may become disabled [sic] when she grows up”.
But before we get to the worries associated with 2-year olds using Douyin, let’s start with the positive. Just as with much of the internet, there is a host of great content out there. With Douyin and the like, one can learn to cook better or play a musical instrument, read classical literature, watch documentaries or movies, and much much more.
And none of it took the investment required (time and money) in a visit to the library, a cinema or an evening music school.
Therein lie the problem. Investment. The lack thereof is that driving Douyin in becoming a kind of disease. One thing is for sure, it is certainly a drug in the sense that it is addictive.
Brain researchers have discovered that when people exhibit behaviour that is beneficial to survival and reproduction, hormones released by the brain encourage further such behaviour and form a virtuous cycle. It’s our “reward mechanism”.
But it’s not just food and sex that make us happy. Human progress and development are also forms of reward. Otherwise, who would be willing to help benefit society? Specifically, people gain a huge sense of accomplishment from setting goals in overcoming difficulty or achieving a mission.
Firefighters, medical staff and border guards all do painful things that others cannot bear, facing unpredictable dangers every day. They do these unimaginable things to the possible cost of their lives because of the pleasure and sense of accomplishment attained. Reward mechanism.
But such hormones also have a threshold.
Every time we repeat the same thing, its threshold increases; more stimulation is needed to achieve the same feeling. Simply repeating the behaviour brings about less pleasure.
Famed philosopher, Lao Zi, wrote in Chapter 23 of the Tao Te Ching, “High winds do not last all morning. Heavy rain does not last all day”. Likewise, post-nerve stimulation does not last long, leading to feelings similar to emptiness. Hence the correlation with psychological addictions to drugs, sex, gaming and Douyin.
But according to this logic, wouldn’t the reward mechanism push everyone into the abyss of addiction? Aren’t we all addicts? No, otherwise humanity would not be at the top of the food chain.
Enter the “aversion mechanism”. Mountain climbing for example, will make the body tired while gaining a sense of accomplishment. But when overly tired, no matter how much you like mountain climbing, you will not continue to make the required sacrifices.
Many mountain climbers find their hobby to be a drug. Yet, it is one in which they worked hard for their accomplishments. But when all that is needed is some white powder, the checks and balances of the aversion mechanism are completely bypassed.
Then comes the addiction to Douyin. No one has to walk to the cinema or theatre, or even earn money to buy a ticket.
Just as with other illegal drugs, the algorithms behind Douyin ensure the aversion mechanism never kicks in. And just in case, the short video teams also came up with a push mechanism that provides an additional stimulus every 15 seconds.
In an attempt to look on the bright side, perhaps the takeaway is that the difference between a 2-year old and a fully grown adult is the former has not yet learned how to be a benefit to society and hence attain infinite more pleasure than anything on a short video platform.
