YouTube Shorts and All Shorts

Generated by author using Craiyon.com

A few months ago, I noticed a new format on my YouTube page — shorts.

Call me old fashioned, but I really dislike this format. With YouTube videos, I can gauge the length and progress of the video and generally turn off the autoplay feature. However, YouTube Shorts, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook Reels all have similar issue:

• You don’t know what’s coming next
• You don’t know how much the video has progressed
• You don’t know the total length of the short except it’s under the maximum length

What’s worse is that over time, these videos develop the same tactics to get the most amount of time wasted. They say “Watch to the end” as if some big reveal will appear when… fizzle fizzle… nothing. I then get upset that I was lured in to a system.

This format works to hook us and then to drive our attention span lower. Hopefully, more apps and other technology emerge to block this type of content.