Published Feb 28, 2026 | 7:00 AM ⚊ Updated Feb 28, 2026 | 7:00 AM
Woman scrolling through phone. (iStock)
Synopsis: A meta-analysis revealed that heavier engagement with short-form video is consistently linked to poorer cognitive performance and worse mental health, in adults and teenagers alike. Short-form video showed its strongest mental health associations with stress and anxiety. The probable pathway runs through dopamine.
You open Instagram for a moment. Forty minutes later, you surface, slightly dazed, unsure where the time went. It feels harmless. However, a growing body of research suggests that the swipe, that frictionless, algorithmic conveyor belt of Reels and Shorts, is quietly reshaping the brain in ways that show up long before you notice anything is wrong.
A sweeping meta-analysis published in Psychological Bulletin pooled 71 studies covering 98,299 participants across the globe. Its verdict was blunt: Heavier engagement with short-form video is consistently linked to poorer cognitive performance and worse mental health, in adults and teenagers alike.
Of all the cognitive skills measured, attention and inhibitory control, your ability to focus and resist distraction, took the hardest hit. The researchers believe the mechanism is straightforward. Every time you swipe, you train your brain to disengage. Novelty is always one flick away, and the platform rewards restlessness. Over time, the brain recalibrates around that rhythm.
The authors frame it through what is known as the dual theory of habituation and sensitisation: repeated exposure to fast-paced, high-stimulation content may desensitise users to slower, more demanding tasks, reading, problem-solving, and deep learning. “Frequent SFV users may exhibit diminished attentional control and a reduced capacity for sustained cognitive engagement, as neurocognitive processes become oriented toward brief, high-reward interactions rather than prolonged, goal-directed tasks,” the study noted.
A separate study from Zhejiang University in China went further, fitting 48 young adults with EEG headsets to monitor their brains in real time. Participants who scored higher on a short-form video addiction scale showed no obvious difference in how fast or accurately they completed attention tasks. On the surface, they looked fine.
However, their brainwaves told another story. When the task demanded conflict resolution, suppressing a wrong answer to give a right one, their frontal theta activity was measurably lower.
Theta oscillations in the prefrontal cortex are the brain’s signal that it is recruiting executive control. Less theta means the control system is simply not engaging as hard. Crucially, the effect held even after accounting for age, gender, anxiety, and depression.
The authors put it plainly: “Prolonged consumption of such content may primarily engage the lower-order cortical brain regions, such as those associated with emotional processing, and suppress activity in higher-order areas responsible for self-control and attention.” In other words, the damage does not show up in your performance until it does — and by then, the brain has already quietly shifted its operating mode.
Back in the meta-analysis, short-form video showed its strongest mental health associations with stress and anxiety. The probable pathway runs through dopamine.
Algorithmically curated feeds deliver hit after hit of novel reward. With repeated exposure, the brain’s reward system adapts, becoming less responsive to ordinary pleasures. As the study puts it, “users may become less responsive to everyday sources of reward, possibly contributing to increased susceptibility to anxiety and depression.”
Meanwhile, the fast pace overstimulates the nervous system before bed, delays sleep onset, and compounds the emotional dysregulation that follows a poor night’s rest. Depression, loneliness, and diminished well-being all trailed in the data, though more weakly. Notably, body image and self-esteem showed no significant association — suggesting that content type, not the format alone, drives those particular harms.
One of the more striking findings is that addiction-like engagement predicted harm far more strongly than raw screen time. Someone spending three hours a day watching videos they consciously chose fared differently from someone compulsively scrolling without intention or stopping cues.
The platform’s design, infinite scroll, autoplay, and no natural endings are built to blur that distinction entirely.
It is worth noting that most studies in the meta-analysis are cross-sectional, capturing a moment rather than a trajectory. It remains possible that people who are already anxious or attention-challenged are drawn more heavily to short-form video than to the reverse.
“The absence of clear directionality highlights the need for more longitudinal and experimental studies,” the authors acknowledged. Causation has not been proven. But the consistency of the associations across platforms, ages, and cultures is striking.
The researchers are not calling for bans. They point to usage nudges, content diversity tools, and, if the EEG findings hold in larger studies, mindfulness training to strengthen the frontal circuits that short-form video appears to quieten.
But the baseline question is simpler than any intervention: the next time the Reels feed loads, it is worth asking who, exactly, is in control of the swipe.
(Edited by Muhammed Fazil.)
