Behaviour and Information Technology

Short-form videos are popular worldwide as a thriving form of entertainment. Its fragmentation pattern, which presents users with intensive and engaging information, might lead to addiction and adverse effects. This study aims to investigate the effect of addiction to short-form videos on users’ attention, including attention while watching videos and the ability of attentional concentration after watching time. Users addicted or non-addicted to short-form videos were screened to participate in a short-form video watching task and a Stroop task based on eye-tracking technology. The results showed that addicted users reported less interest, centration, and more distractions and exhibited more fixation counts and shorter average fixation duration during watching short-form videos than non-addicted users. In the Stroop task, addicted users achieved longer response time and less accuracy and showed longer average fixation duration, more fixation counts, and saccades between the targets and the distractors than non-addicted users. The results suggest that addicted users might suffer more difficulties maintaining attention, have more attention deficits while watching short-form videos, and have impaired attentional concentration for processing interference. The findings contribute to understanding the effect of addiction to short-form videos and provide helpful insight into using it healthily and preventing addiction.

The effect of short-form video addiction on users’ attention