Short-Form Videos Degrade Our Capacity to Retain Intentions: Effect of Context Switching On Prospective Memory

Chiossi, Francesco; Haliburton, Luke; Ou, Changkun; Butz, Andreas; Schmidt, Albrecht · 2023 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.1145/3544548.3580778

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

Get this paper ↗ (DOI — opens at the source; we link to it, we don't host it)

Summary

This study investigates the impact of different social media feed formats on prospective memory (PM), defined as the ability to remember to execute a planned action at a specific time or upon a cue while engaged in another activity. Motivated by the rapid proliferation of short-form video platforms like TikTok and the known cognitive costs of digital interruptions, the authors sought to quantify how varying levels of context switching and engagement affect intention retention. The research specifically addresses the gap in understanding how the unique design of short-form video feeds—characterized by rapid, high-density context switches—impairs cognitive functions compared to other social media formats or rest. To answer this, the researchers conducted a between-subjects laboratory experiment with 60 participants. Participants performed a dual-task paradigm consisting of a continuous lexical decision (LD) task and an intermittent PM task. The experiment included two measurement blocks: a pre-interruption phase and a post-interruption phase. Between these blocks, participants underwent a 10-minute interruption condition assigned based on their personal usage habits. The four conditions were: Rest (no device use), Twitter (text-based feed with rapid context switching), YouTube (longer-form video with minimal context switching), and TikTok (short-form video with rapid, highly engaging context switching). Performance was measured via accuracy and reaction times, analyzed using drift diffusion modeling to assess cognitive processing parameters. The results demonstrated that engaging with TikTok during the interruption significantly degraded prospective memory performance in the subsequent task block compared to the Rest condition. Specifically, the rapid context switching and high engagement of short-form videos impaired the participants' ability to recall and execute their intentions. In contrast, neither the Twitter nor the YouTube conditions produced a statistically significant negative effect on PM performance relative to rest. The study found that the detrimental impact was specific to the combination of short videos and rapid context switching, rather than social media use generally. These findings provide a quantified understanding of how specific social media feed designs affect cognitive function. The authors conclude that the TikTok-style feed format poses a unique risk to prospective memory, which is critical for daily productivity and safety. The study implies that media technology designers must consider the cognitive consequences of rapid context switching and high-engagement loops. By highlighting the specific mechanism of impairment, the research offers evidence for designing interfaces that mitigate memory degradation and support digital wellbeing, rather than maximizing engagement at the cost of user cognitive capacity.

Provenance

The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed.

Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-25; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• prospective memory interruptions