The rise of short form media came naturally to our fast paced world. And while it originally seemed to solely bring positive benefits, the negative effects that have developed have the potential to end creativity in our culture.
Before the rise of the internet, people got dopamine from practicing their hobbies or going outside. Before that, dopamine was given when you found food or shelter as a way to help you survive. But once social media became prolific in our lives, doing long term tasks to acquire dopamine became irrelevant. Social media is a constant stream of short term reception of dopamine, and it’s easy and never ending. The easy access and quick reward mean it’s increasingly easier to become addicted to your phone. The repetitive flow of flashing lights and bright colors make our phones the first thing we want to see when we wake up and the last thing we want to see before we go to sleep.
While these quick shots of dopamine aren’t inherently bad, an absolute dependence on them leads to increased depression and anxiety. Our brain isn’t equipped to have access to the entire world all at once, and we often feel pressure to measure up to these supposedly “perfect” people, who really post their best aspects online. The brain is also put in to a deficit once we turn off our phones as it tries to make up for the unnaturally high levels of dopamine it just received.
These addicting factors mean we’re constantly searching for another shot. We want to maintain the high for as long as possible, which leads to us judging every piece of content we see by the first few seconds. The average attention span has shrunk to just 8 seconds, less than that of a goldfish. This lack of attention span makes it harder for children at school, because they’ve lost the ability to focus and learn without that instant gratification.
The rise of short form content has led to the essential end of long form media. Movies used to be hours long and contain complex plotlines and references. Now, if you can’t follow the plot of a movie while also scrolling social media, the movie is less likely to do well. Directors use the same actors and the same cliche plots for every film, knowing their audience won’t watch unless it’s exciting and predictable.
Short form content also has negative effects on music, especially as artists begin to use social media to market their songs. Musicians often have one ultra-catchy clip that they use to advertise their songs, while the rest of the song is lackluster and bland. One recent example of this is Benson Boone’s song Beautiful Things. Boone used the beginning of the bridge of Beautiful Things in multiple clips across social media platforms over the span of a few weeks, garnering excitement for the release. However, once the song came out, fans were disappointed as the rest of the song failed to live up to expectations. This is a prime instance of an artist making one part of their song very good and hyping that part up with the intention of the song going viral, while failing to apply the same effort to the entire song.
Another trap musicians fall prey to is over-marketing their song. While over-marketing may sound like a good thing, it can lead to artists losing fans because of the lack of progress. A current example of this is artist Claire Rosinkranz and her new song Lucy. When Rosinkranz first announced she was preparing new music fans were overjoyed, and the song was originally met with excitement. But as she continued to only use one part of the song with no hint of a release date, fans became weary and began complaining in the comments. This serves as another song that social media is effectively ruining, because no matter how it would succeed before this incident, now that negative reaction is all it’s going to be correlated with.
Although in the current fast-paced world of marketing this is what works best for musicians, fans are becoming more tired of it. This strategy pales in comparison to media marketing pre-social media, when bands would hang posters, hand out fliers, and play their songs on the radio to get people to buy their music.
Short form media isn’t inherently bad. In fact, there are many examples of social media positively impacting artists, by launching them to fame and making them wide-spread knowledge. But as our society becomes more centered around it, high quality art and artists get caught in the crossfire, and eventually forgotten altogether.
