Is social media teaching us to think in shortcuts?
Platforms that reward attention, speed, and comparison encourage shortcut cognition: quick belief and weaker reasoning, visible in attention span, comprehension, and how well belief matches evidence.
Hypotheses.
What the paper argues, written so it can be tested.
- H1
The more time people spend watching short videos and other people’s feeds, the shorter their attention span and the weaker their comprehension of long text.
- H2
Heavy users judge claims more by how popular or urgent they feel, so their beliefs follow the evidence less closely, and the effect is smaller for people with more digital literacy.
The model.
Shortcut cognition: platforms reward speed, popularity, and watching other people, and that divides attention. Divided attention pushes people toward quick belief and weaker analysis, and their engagement feeds the same design.
Partial abstract.
How speed, metrics, and social comparison on social media shape the way people form beliefs. The paper proposes a measurable mode of thought, shortcut cognition, marked by reactive belief and weaker analysis.
Is Social Media Making Us Dumber? Cognitive Shortcuts in Digital Discourse
Key sources
- Carr, N. (2010). Does the Internet make you dumber? The Wall Street Journal.
- Haliti-Sylaj, T., and Sadiku, A. (2024). Impact of short reels on attention span and academic performance of undergraduate students.
How we’ll test it.
No results yet. This is the plan: the data, the measure, and what would count as support.
The data
Daily screen time for short video and social feeds from students who agree to share it, with an attention task, a reading test, and a set of claims to judge.
The measure
Errors and reaction time on the attention task, reading comprehension scores, and how closely confidence in each claim follows its evidence.
What would count as support
Heavier use predicts more errors, lower comprehension, and confidence that follows popularity more than evidence, with a weaker link for people high in digital literacy.
How it connects to Pulp.
Pulp’s work on reasoning and data literacy.
Doing work like this?
Students from any school or field, and mentors from academia or industry: get in touch.