Abstract

This paper asserts that TikTok has caused the sustained attention spans of youngsters to decrease and examines whether this claim is true in Mauritius as well. The immoderate scrolling on the TikTok social media application has activated a considerable amount of the feel-good chemical known as dopamine in the youths’ brains and subsequently, making it challenging for young TikTok users to shift their attention towards slow activities that require a high level of focus. Nevertheless, authors conducted a survey population which included all 80,000 secondary students in Mauritius from 200 colleges regarding their usage of Online Social Networks (OSN). Teenagers find maintaining their online reputation and fame more appealing than creating quality bonds on TikTok. TikTok provides youngsters with a platform to be part of a community by either being a content producer or a content consumer while having freewill to choose whether to interact with other TikTok users or not.  Parents and educators are to be blamed for not encouraging students to maintain longer sustained attention spans. The youth’s utilization of educational technology increases their interest in learning and attention spans as it encourages research for more information on a topic, contributes to collaborative learning and gives way to a more in-depth assimilation of ideas. This paper concludes that TikTok negatively affects youths psychologically but not in the case of Mauritius, diminishes the quality of the youths’ social lives while also helping them create meaningful bonds and causes their sustained attention spans to both ameliorate and deteriorate via their engagement with educational content on TikTok.

 

Introduction

The Chinese technology company ByteDance introduced the social media application TikTok which joined the classification of social media jumbos in the fastest amount of time the world has ever seen, in 2016. TikTok owns workrooms in several countries. The well-known social media platform provides its users with the possibility to produce, consume and disseminate 15 to 60 seconds video clips recorded via the utilization of smartphone devices or digital cameras. TikTok is a new phenomenon which has become prominent in the lives of the youth on various levels such as the social, educational and psychological levels. Many authors have established a relationship between excessive scrolling on TikTok and the sustained attention spans of adolescents by arguing that TikTok has caused the sustained attention spans of youngsters to decrease. Sustained attention span can be referred to as a procedure that grants the prolongation of attentiveness and uninterrupted effort over elongated durations. This research paper will focus on the analysis of the argument that TikTok has caused the sustained attention spans of youngsters to decrease and whether this is the case in Mauritius as well.

 

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From a psychological perspective, researches demonstrate that youths’ high exposure to short videos on TikTok has had a significant impact on their brains, causing a reduction in their sustained attention spans. Carl Marci, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston argues that analyzing growing trends in all kinds of media consumption, media multitasking and ADHD levels in youngsters without deducing that the attention spans of the latter is shrinking is difficult (Jargon 2022). Still, parents confessed that even though their teenagers were not medically diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, the latter showcased lower levels of sustained attention spans than before. Increasing investigations indicate that children who are highly exposed to short and fast-moving videos find it challenging to maintain activities that do not provide them with immediate and continuous gratification (Jargon 2022). Bing-scrolling TikTok videos has triggered a high level of dopamine release in the brains of youngsters and consequently, making it difficult for young viewers to divert their focus towards activities that are slow in nature whereby a high degree of concentration is required. Jargon (2022) also claims that nowadays, young people no longer watch YouTube clips- watching YouTube videos appears to be excruciatingly slow for teenagers who prefer binge-scrolling on 15-seconds TikTok videos intermittently. This finding suggests that the excessive scrolling on TikTok indeed triggered the sustained attention spans of young people to hugely go down, irrespective of whether some of them suffer from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder detections or not. Nevertheless, Khedo et al (2013) conducted a survey population which included all 80,000 secondary students in Mauritius from 200 colleges regarding their usage of Online Social Networks (OSN). The study showcased that 63.4% of the students reported that they encountered at least one unpleasant experience- 53.5% of the participants confessed that they had conversations with people utilizing obscene languages, 46.5% expressed that they were constantly bullied by online strangers, 33.4% had people spying on their online activities and 11.5% received inappropriate pictures and videos. While these statistics support the argument that to some extent, social media platforms indeed affect Mauritian teenagers psychologically, no evidence that TikTok affects the Mauritian youth psychologically by decreasing their sustained attention spans has been found.

 

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Furthermore, studies demonstrate that the utilization of TikTok during the Coronavirus crisis in April 2020 generated a fall in the sustained attention spans of adolescents. Haigney (2020) as cited in Kennedy (2020) avers that besides the humorous portrayals of boredom on TikTok and the suggestions for netizens to enhance their creativity and productivity to prevent boredom, the United Kingdom’s Guardian wrote an article about TikTok being ‘the perfect medium for the splintered attention spans of lockdown’. The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the utilization of TikTok and the consumption of its 60 second or less videos have coerced the already-short, sustained attention spans of young TikTok users into becoming even shorter. Numerous TikTok users also complained that they could no longer watch television for a long period of time because of their short, sustained attention spans, preferring instead to watch 15 seconds of a teenager dancing with his or her mother entailed by 15 seconds of a puppy napping. With TikTok, everything is divided, interpreted erroneously, mixed up, and somehow phenomenal- it all occurs so quickly that it doesn’t seem to be mugging the time of social media users. Therefore, the self-control of adolescents pertaining to the amount of time they choose to watch short-form videos on TikTok plays a crucial role in determining whether their sustained attention spans will be reduced or not. According to Qin et al (2022), various solutions have been advanced regarding the rise in problematical short-form video utilization among teenagers- more focus is being shifted to young people to alleviate their complicated social media utilization such as ameliorating their self-control, mindfulness, self-esteem and metacognitive beliefs. However, it has been concluded that this method proved to be unsuccessful due to the tender age and low levels of maturity of teenagers. The latter frequently experience a tough time conquering the impulse to engaging with contemporary things and generally have a lack of self-control. The relationship between youth’s self-control while using the TikTok app and knowing when to alter their focus to important tasks such as studying, practicing physical exercise and so on and sustained attention spans can be identified. The findings depict that TikTok is indeed a social media platform which contributes to the depletion of the sustained attention spans of youngsters, especially for those with low degrees of self-control and maturity.

 

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From a social viewpoint, scholars affirmed that TikTok reduces the sustained attention spans of adolescents, causing them to struggle to form meaningful social relationships. Nonusers of the TikTok social media application expressed that the situation of youngsters becoming famous overnight tends to incite the latter to associate a sense of exaggerated self-importance with creativity, boosts their desire for new things, and affects the attention span and patience of daily users (Chakraborty et al 2020). Popularity has made teenagers blind, in addition to having reduced their level of sustained attention spans in the sense that they no longer know how to form quality bonds – they are constantly looking for new things that will increase their levels of dopamine just like 15-60 TikTok videos do. Other scholars, Malik et al (2022) proffered that the incentive of using smartphones to explore the internet is the onset of transitions in the social background and life of a family. Teenagers being addicted to social media platforms and TikTok being the major element leading to the youths’ falling attention spans, as the findings demonstrate, correlate to the idea that these factors are leaned towards the deterioration of young TikTok users’ family life, especially in terms of the parent-child relationship. Consequently, parents are unable to have proper conversations with their children due to the latter’s short, sustained attention spans inciting them to constantly be glued to their smartphones- this is known as a ‘problematic smartphone usage’. Nonetheless, Burns-Stanning (2020) claims that TikTok provides youngsters with a platform to be part of a community by either being a content producer or a content consumer while having freewill to choose whether to interact with other TikTok users or not. This highlights the concept of ‘participatory culture’ whereby adolescents can form part of a culture of participation on TikTok, providing them with a sense of belonging- they become prosumers by both consuming and producing content on the social media site. Into the bargain, Burns-Stanning (2020) further adds that digital spheres are acting as the sole spaces permitting youths to form large groups to engage with their comrades in the absence of adult supervision. In the case of Mauritius, Jha (2016) agrees with Burns-Stanning (2020) by stating that according to an Analysis in 2012, social media sites in Mauritius experienced an impressive boost in the number of users which reached 700,000 and their participation time on Online Social Networks. The author asserts that most users utilized social media to remain in contact with friends, keep record and amend their activities and join online communities. These arguments can be countered through the findings advanced by Qin et al (2020), suggesting that most teenagers still need to be supervised by their parents given their fragile age, and low self-control and maturity pertaining to the utilization of social media leading to the lessening of their sustained attention spans. It is indeed a positive element that the TikTok platform is providing teenagers with the opportunity to participate in a community but on the other hand, being on their own in their personal spaces without being under the supervision of an adult increases the probability of their sustained attention spans to fall.

 

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From an educational standpoint, scholars asserted that excessive exposure to educational content in the form of short videos on TikTok led students’ sustained attention spans to decrease. Carrison (2005) as cited in Barnes et al (2007) argues that the main reasons explaining why the sustained attention spans of students are short is the numerous educational media contents parents and teachers have advised young people to engage with and partly because educators and parents did not assist pupils in maintaining longer sustained attention spans. Educators hold a high responsibility regarding this issue- through the attempt of adapting with the styles of learning of the Net Cohort given the contemporary society in which we are living and the rate at which technology is evolving, teachers motivate their pupils to interact with several media which might enhance their work whilst omitting to mention that taking it easy, concentrating and examining the material in an assiduous manner are factors which are equally crucial. Even so, Duan (2023) attests that the majority of short TikTok videos are captivating, with video lengths of only 20 to 30 seconds consisting of a low level of language knowledge. The author further supports his argument by stating that the smartphone acts as a miniature classroom suitable for micro-learning, making it convenient for short, sustained attention spans. In a Mauritian context, Laferriere et al (2001) as cited in Ramnarain-Seetohul (2014) back up Duan (2023) by averring that the utilization pf educational technology assists the stimulation development of intellectual skills such as problem solving, creativity and the knowledge of learning. Ramnarain-Seetohul (2014) also advances that the youth’s utilization of educational technology increases their interest in learning and attention span as it encourages research for more information on a topic, contributes to collaborative learning and gives way to a more in-depth assimilation of ideas. These findings depict that the use of educational content on TikTok can indeed lead to a reduction in the sustained attention spans of youngsters while simultaneously acting as a miniature classroom, increase their attention spans and help them better assimilate their ideas.

 

Conclusion

This paper provides in-depth analyses pertaining to the argument that TikTok has caused the sustained attention spans of youngsters to decrease from psychological, social and educational point of views. Considering the above findings pertaining to the psychological aspect, the utilization of the TikTok application by youngsters has indeed reduced the sustained attention spans of the latter, regardless of whether some of them suffer from ADHD or not. In the Mauritian context, statistics illustrate that to some extent, social media sites indeed affect Mauritian teenagers psychologically but no evidence that TikTok decreases the Mauritian youth’s sustained attention spans has been found. Socially speaking, some scholars pointed out that TikTok diminishes the youth’s sustained attention spans and the quality of their social relationships in real life while other intellectuals, including one Mauritian author counter argued that social media platforms contribute to participatory culture and assist teenagers in forming social relationships and being part of online communities. From an educational viewpoint, investigations portray that educational content on TikTok only reduce the sustained attention spans of youngsters while in the Mauritian context, the academic disagrees by saying that educational content on social media increases students’ attention spans and help them better assimilate ideas.

 

References

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