Using Short Form Content to Exercise Your Brain (With Language Learning)

Detail of the painting “Frost at Giverny” by Claude Monet

Short form content is bad for our brains yet is still appealing. It shortens our attention spans. It can often be a huge time sink. Without a clear endpoint, it’s easy to scroll for longer than intended. Even when viewing educational content, it’s extremely difficult to retain anything you learn due to the nature of back to back short content. Despite all of this and even other consequences, people still continue to view short form content, and lots of it. However, If you are going to view this type of content, there is a way it can actually benefit your brain.

In stark contrast to the brain rot inducing hell of short form content, we have language learning which is one of the best workouts you can do for your brain. Language learning increases white matter integrity in the brain which is associated with a decrease in chances of developing dementia. Language learning has also been found to increase executive functions4 which are higher-level cognitive skills. It has even been strongly shown to increase people’s ability to concentrate. These are just a few of the many benefits that language learning has. Combining the attention grabbing and entertaining nature of short form content with the powers of language learning would create an effective, enjoyable, and easy workout for your brain.

Frost at Giverny by Claude Monet

Even if you are an absolute beginner language learner, lots of input in your target language (TL) is an essential step in reaching fluency. Even if only parts of the input is comprehensible to you based on the videos’ context, your understanding of the language and fluency will increase over time as your brain grapples with this new set of patterns. Short form content could be a way of getting the massive amounts of input required for your brain to adjust to this new way of thinking.

The most basic practical application of this is just to watch lots of content in your TL. This can be difficult to find at first especially if you are a beginner, but it is possible with the help of a translation app and a little ingenuity. One way of doing this is to start a new account on your favorite social media, and then use this new account to view videos in your TL. How much you understand is irrelevant at this point. You just need to train your new algorithm to give you content in your TL. To find videos to seed your algorithm with, you can talk to speakers of your TL, use a search engine to find content creators using your TL, talk with chatbots to discover creators, or even use a translation app to search for keywords in your TL. Simply view videos on those accounts to train your algorithm. If you aren’t up to creating an entirely new account, you can still achieve similar results by simply finding specific content creators whose videos you can scroll through. The saying goes “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”, but maybe you can.

References

• The Effects of The Addictive Nature Of Short-form Videos On Users’ Perceived Attention Span And Mood Torben J. Kohler
• The effect of short-form video addiction on undergraduates’ academic procrastination: a moderated mediation model by Jin Xie, et. al ↩︎
• Teens Spend Average of 4.8 Hours on Social Media Per Day By Jonathan Rothwell ↩︎
• Effects of bilingualism on white matter integrity in older adults by John A.E. Anderson, et. al ↩︎
• Cognitive Benefits of Language Learning: Broadening our perspectives by Bencie Woll and Li Wei, ↩︎
• Novelty, Challenge, and Practice: The Impact of Intensive Language Learning on Attentional Functions by Thomas H. Bak, et. al ↩︎
• The Role of Input in Second Language Acquisition by Taher Bahrani ↩︎
• Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning by Stephen D Krashen ↩︎