Technology

In 2013, short video hosting service Vine dared to ask: do people want to post very short videos? It turns out they did. Soon, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube copied the idea. Then, TikTok weaponised the idea globally after it incubated as the app Douyin.

Today, TikTok commands 50bn daily views, while YouTube is the king with 200bn daily views of its Shorts videos. Naturally, that level of success attracts scrutiny, and some are asking whether short-form videos are good for us. History is full of critics who warned that technology would be bad for our brains. Pundits often drag out Socrates' warning that writing would hurt our ability to remember, as a way of saying: "Gee, how dumb they were. You must be wrong about short videos as well!" However, Socrates made a bigger and more astute point. More on that in a while. First, yes, short-form videos are bad for our minds.