It’s official: the UK is banning social media for under-16s. Among the many issues it seeks to handle is the addictive nature of short-form content material and its dangerous impact on youngsters’s consideration spans.
However the TikTokification of different platforms threatens to undermine lots of the optimistic results of social media bans. And it’s not solely youngsters who’re affected. The web is rising worse for all of us.
Every thing is TikTok now
I in all probability don’t want to clarify what TikTokification is. The TikTok model is so synonymous with short-form vertical video that just about everybody will recognise it.
The rationale TikTok has been so profitable and impressed dozens of clones throughout the web is that it’s virtually inconceivable to withstand. It’s bite-sized content material that begins enjoying routinely and is designed to be addictive.
The following video is all the time only a swipe away, whereas the unpredictability of what’s coming is confirmed to trigger spikes of dopamine, the mind’s “feel-good hormone”. It’s no shock that we maintain coming again for extra.
Artur Tomala / Foundry
I can nearly settle for these movies on social media platforms, even when I don’t agree with the rationale for unleashing them on us. However within the wider on-line world, short-form movies are a blatant strategy to hijack our consideration whereas providing little in the best way of advantages in return.
Take the private instance that impressed this text. After I lastly bought my smartphone use underneath management earlier this yr, BBC Sport was one of many apps I relied on to maintain my digital food regimen balanced. There have been no doom-laden information tales or clickbait headlines – simply up-to-date, reliable articles on a collection of subjects that curiosity me.
Then got here the replace. Earlier this month, the BBC introduced that it was including ‘Shorts’ to the app through a devoted tab on the backside of the display screen, enabling one-tap entry from wherever.
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The design mimics the YouTube app, and its impact is predictably comparable. Each time I open the app, I’m counting on willpower alone to withstand the urge to faucet Shorts, one thing I used to waste hours on each week on YouTube.
The app even affords you the choice to make Shorts your default homepage, basically turning it into TikTok for sport.
It’s removed from an remoted instance. Just a few days in the past, I downloaded The Royal Horticultural Society’s (RHS) app, eager to utilize its gardening steerage. As an alternative, the preeminent ‘RHS Video Shorts’ feed on the homepage means I do know all about Alan Titchmarsh’s desert island vegetation as an alternative. As fascinating because it was, it was additionally an enormous time suck.
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It’s a sample we see repeated throughout on-line media. Earlier this yr, Netflix launched ‘Clips’ to its cellular app, pitching it as a “personalised spotlight reel” to keep away from limitless scrolling. It won’t be an limitless feed, however shallow engagement with brief clips is a catastrophe for our consideration span. Having fun with a TV present or movie typically requires a level of delayed gratification; it shouldn’t need to hook you immediately to be price watching.
Simply days later, Prime Video adopted swimsuit with a ‘Clips’ function of its personal – zero marks for originality there. Amazon hasn’t but cracked short-form video inside its on-line market, shuttering its TikTok Store-esque Encourage platform final yr, however I’d count on it to be again for extra in some unspecified time in the future.
Martyn Casserly
Spotify. LinkedIn. YouTube Music. Pinterest. The New York Occasions. BBC Information. Sky Sports activities. ASOS. NatWest. The record of firms which have embraced TikTokification seems to be unending. To keep away from short-form video completely in 2026 requires opting out of enormous elements of the web, which merely isn’t practical.
The “plenty of folks watch short-form video” fallacy
In saying the ‘Shorts’ rollout, BBC Sport used a typical rationale: “Extra followers are following sport via short-form video than ever earlier than.”
I don’t doubt the accuracy of this assertion, however I’ve an enormous drawback with it getting used as justification for an enormous growth of TikTok-style content material.
The New York Occasions. BBC Information. Sky Sports activities. ASOS. NatWest. The record of firms which have embraced TikTokification seems to be unending
Foundry
As a way to write this text, I eliminated my regular block on the BBC web site on my work laptop computer. Within the final half an hour alone, I’ve watched about 10 shorts, together with the identical one 4 occasions. It’s an expertise that I’m certain many individuals will likely be accustomed to.
The equation is easy: by incorporating short-form video, platforms can just about assure that extra folks will spend longer on them. Which means extra adverts could be proven (or, within the BBC’s case, future funding could be secured), so it makes excellent enterprise sense.
However to assert that you simply’re introducing short-form video to raised serve your viewers is extremely deceptive.
Persons are watching plenty of them, sure, nevertheless it’s typically not out of selection. Quick-form video is the final word type of distraction, encouraging shallow highlights reasonably than any deep engagement with subjects. It’s no marvel that individuals typically can’t bear in mind what they’ve watched simply seconds after swiping away.
Within the final half an hour alone, I’ve watched about 10 shorts, together with the identical one 4 occasions
The rise of AI and an extremely risky media panorama means many firms really feel they need to go all-in on short-form video to outlive. As miserable as that’s, I’m not going to evaluate any single organisation too harshly for doing what it deems vital. Simply don’t faux it’s about something aside from maximising the time spent in your platform.
It speaks volumes that the BBC permits you to make Shorts your default house display screen on the BBC Sport app, but doesn’t permit you to change them off completely.
Quick-form video is a critical well being danger
Which may sound like ridiculous hyperbole. On what planet is testing a couple of World Cup clips critically harming folks’s well being?
As is usually the case, it’s not about anybody video, however the cumulative impact of counting on short-form content material as a main technique of consumption.
In 2025, a meta-analysis (thought-about to be the gold customary of scientific analysis) of 71 research and virtually 100,000 members discovered that elevated short-form video use was related to poorer psychological well being, together with important will increase in ranges of melancholy and nervousness.
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Even stronger associations could be seen with decrease inhibitory management and lowered consideration span, whereas poorer cognition can also be reported. Concerningly, these findings have been constant throughout age teams and totally different platforms, with the research acknowledging the “pervasive function in each day life” of short-form video.
Research strongly counsel that top short-form video consumption considerably harms our well being
One other key research from earlier this yr discovered an affiliation between short-form video habit and elevated ranges of hysteria and loneliness. Ranges of life satisfaction are additionally decrease.
Whereas not definitive, these research strongly counsel that top short-form video consumption considerably harms our well being, and the impact seems to be platform-agnostic. Social media bans restrict publicity for kids, however they’ll solely ever be a partial answer when short-form video is rampant throughout the web.
Apart from, do we actually need to substitute conventional leisure, with its emphasis on rest, with rabid, TikTok-style consumption?
Meta
A basically flawed mannequin
I hate that we dwell in a world the place embracing TikTokification is seen as the one strategy to safe your future as a media organisation. Its results on our well being are being largely ignored as an increasing number of firms search to maintain us engaged.
However reining within the pervasive march of short-form video requires a basic shift in the best way society operates, which is past the attain of any single authorities.
Apart from, do we actually need to substitute conventional leisure, with its emphasis on rest, with rabid, TikTok-style consumption?
Social media bans are an necessary first step, however the ship has lengthy since sailed in terms of the TikTokification of the media panorama. Quick-form video appears right here to remain, and can probably proceed to have dangerous results on the individuals who usually eat it.
Finally, even within the absence of social media, youngsters and adults should grapple with an web that’s typically set to take advantage of reasonably than present for them.