Watching TikTok and Instagram deactivates the cognitive control network: Study

dlPFC deactivation is observed in a lot of immersive tasks. There are a lot of tasks that do this. Playing video games, as one example https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/4-431-26797-2_11

Interpreting fMRI results like this article does is almost always wrong. Different activities produce different patterns of brain activity. You could put someone in an fMRI machine, have them do virtually any activity, and then write a headline saying that doing that activity turns of key brain regions that are important for something. The trick is that all brain regions are important for something. Having them be less active during a task doesn't imply that it's good or bad. It just shows you which parts of the brain are involved in that task.

This blogspam article isn't great. The study at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105381192... has more details, like the fact that those brain regions come online while viewing other less-preferred videos. The results aren't really indicative of anything by themself. It would have been more interesting if they compared to something, like watching a long involved movie or playing video games, but they didn't.

Also this post is coming from a fresh account that only spams links to this blog. Maybe the mods will want to switch the link to the actual study instead: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105381192...

I haven’t read the study, but I’ve read the comments so far.

I wonder if this mechanism is the same mechanism that impacts, say, swipe-focused dating websites, as well? And Twitter feeds with super-short messages. A lot of the most viral modern tech has been bite-sized content feeds of various types.

It used to be that reading books made you an intellectual. In the age of TikTok and shorts being able to watch a movie for 2 hours makes you an intellectual.

Headlines like this are tiring because they're always a vast simplification of an epidemic that has a much more complicated series of social and psychological causes than a simple "it turns ur brain off"

Why only TikTok videos. Other contenders are Instagram reels, Youtube Shorts, Snapchat, etc.

BTW its Social Media as per studies

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12329480/

Whole bunch of research,

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/?term=Social+Media

But, my point is its normal Every generation behave differently. We shouldn't judge it even via these studies.

Isn't much of all this the modern couch potato and same as many research done being glued to the TV? It's channel surfing.

The hilarious thing is that midway through reading this article a full screen (mobile) ad popped up which was some bullshit “influencer” style short form video ad.

It looks like this account (Akasci) was set up to promote rathbiotaclan.com which just looks like an AI generated newsite to me. Am I wrong?

Yesterday someone showed a TikTok video where a friend of him was interviewed on the street. The question was, “What is your best fighting stance?”

I found it surprising how little depth the video had

Blipverts you say.

Oh, and only these two social media sites? Or we're only going to headline echo that it is TikTok? Why does this smell like out of control propaganda?

I no longer get there. But when the algorithm gets really curated for me, 30 minutes on Tiktok is a fantastic good time.

I have deleted my Tiktok account 5 times. No longer a user.

I get the TikTok addiction, but before that it was fb, before that was the tv, before that the newspaper/magazines, before that the books, before that table games etc

I don’t know it seems that regardless of the technology the brain needs dozing off from reality.

The brain is incredibly energy hungry so it evolved to detect situations that don’t require full attention and activates the Default Mode Network. This happens when you’re zoning out to pretty much anything, and indicates that you’re essentially in “low power mode”.

My question here is whether the framing of the content in question “shutting off brain regions” is an honest one compared to what I said above. fMRI is amazing to be sure, but what it tells us is limited.

So without endorsing crap content on any way, I’m very skeptical of this article’s conclusions based on the study in question.

I don’t have tiktok now, but years ago I downloaded it (i think before it was called musically), I used it for a day or two, and I remember after an hour or so of using it I get nauseous like how you might get on a boat, not severe enough to puke but still not comfy that you need to go for a walk or something to feel better. I deleted it and never used it again. And I don’t use any mainstream social media either since all bow have these shorts, if it’s not text based like rss or hn, it will be YouTube on videos at least 20min duration.

Today I found out that half my traffic on my apps are coming from bots. I am considering leaving the online world. Its becoming a hostile unpleasant place. This article report only fuels my devotion.

hell yeah it does, feels nice at the end of a long day

Worthwhile to note that “TikTok” here just means the format, not the platform. YouTube has its “shorts”, Facebook, insta, X, et all engage heavily in milking your doom scrolled eyeballs for time and profit.

the linked study effectively drills down on aspects of previous work ...

"High-frequency SFV [short form video] use was consistently associated with attentional disruption, reduced executive functioning, and emotional dysregulation."

"Neuroimaging results revealed reduced activation in the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC) and Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) regions ... when participants viewed personalised TikTok videos."

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.27.25334540v...

"(The ACC) is involved in ... higher-level functions, such as attention allocation, reward anticipation, decision-making, impulse control .. and emotion."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterior_cingulate_cortex

"The DLPFC is ... the highest cortical area that is involved in motor planning, organization and regulation."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorsolateral_prefrontal_cortex

by permitting unlimited short form content and not disallowing child access we are allowing corporations to destroy kids brains. therefore I posit the latest generation has been rendered retarded, which will pose a dire threat to continued stability unless addressed.

LLMs and social media is 500+ PHD behavioral psychologists working together to make you do things at any price so they can make as much money as they can - in fact, if they don't try to make as much money as they can, everyone involved will be fired.

To me this is one of the final forms of our current laissez-faire capitalism - we are literally taking away our own agency in the name of "freedom" (of capitalists to maximize returns).

very worrying study, essentially its a digital->neurochemistry chasm crossing substance that uses the 2 senses.

all more reasons to heavily discourage the usage of short form content , we might require regulations against what is essentially an invisible drug that rapidly replicate and distribute itself among the masses.

That’s a bad thing right?

Less brain, no thinking. Me thinks

Shocking that Zhejiang University didn't find this when TikTok was Chinese...