Short-Video Addiction and its Influence on Attention Span and Academic Performance

Abstract

Short-form video apps like TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts are booming globally and have sparked worries among educators and researchers regarding their effect on the cognitive and academic lives of students at university. This paper is a synthesis of the expanding empirical and theoretical research on short video addiction, sustained attention and academic achievement. The review brings current knowledge from theoretical perspectives such as uses and gratifications theory, the component model of behavioral addiction, and social cognitive theory to illuminate how the variable-reward design of short video platforms contributes to compulsive use, distracts sustained attention, and correlates with academic procrastination, anxiety, and decreased engagement. However, a consistent trend of negative but not always statistically significant associations between short video or smartphone addiction and academic performance has been found in reviewed cross sectional studies conducted in China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Lebanon, Honduras, and Somalia, with effect sizes often being small to moderate. Illustrative tables and figures are used to provide a synthesis of patterns of usage, correlation coefficients and mediation effects from the literature examined. Mediating factors (mindfulness, boredom proneness and sleep quality) and methodological issues (self-reports and cross-sectional designs) are discussed. The paper ends with suggestions for further longitudinal and experimental studies and for students, teachers and university staff who want to lessen the academic costs of short video overuse.