by Anna Pinson
In The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, Nicholas Carr argues that the Internet has physically changed the brains of human beings in a way that reflects the nature of the tool, causing extreme distraction, worsened memories, and shallower intelligence. To prove his point, Carr compares the modern computer- and Internet-based culture to the preceding book-based culture of the West, tracing the history of writing, reading, and printing. He clearly shows that this shift has made massive changes on the world and human beings. Carr contrasts the effects that the written word had on the minds of people with the impacts of the Internet, citing studies and persuasively connecting research to the personal experience of every reader. This article will provide an overview of Carr’s argument, focusing on his exploration of worsened attention spans, and will make applications to the popular social media platform TikTok.
What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
Carr explains that all tools, old or new, analog or digital, change how a person’s brain functions. The brain possesses a quality called “plasticity,” meaning that “virtually all of our neural circuits—whether they’re involved in feelings, seeing, hearing, moving, thinking, learning, perceiving, or remembering—are subject to change.”[1] Human beings are not a mere product of their biology; the environment a person is in and the repeated actions he does or are done to him cause the brain to adapt. This process can be a good thing, but it can also be detrimental. Carr quotes research psychiatrist Norman Doidge as saying, “If we stop exercising our mental skills, we do not just forget them: the brain map space for those skills is turned over to the skills we practice instead.”[2] Our brains are formed according to that which we give attention to.
For centuries, the written word reigned as the dominant communications technology in the West. Carr explains that the medium of the written word encourages focused attention and deeper thinking that is not necessarily characteristic of humans: “To read a book was to practice an unnatural process of thought, one that demanded sustained, unbroken attention to a single, static object.”[3] Silent reading encouraged individuals to take their time attempting to understand and think through a complex idea. This development had an extremely positive effect on people’s brains. Carr writes, “As our ancestors imbued their minds with the discipline to follow a line of argument or narrative through a succession of printed pages, they became more contemplative, reflective, and imaginative.”[4]
Now in the technological age, these positive effects of the almost bygone literary age have been replaced by what Carr calls the intellectual ethic of the Internet. Carr defines “intellectual ethic” as “a set of assumptions about how the human mind works or should work.”[5] The inventors of a technology rarely see what the intellectual ethic of their technology is, and that ethic can often be recognized only long after the technology has taken hold. The intellectual ethic of the Internet encourages distractedness, multitasking, fragmented thinking, and poor memory.
Most digital content is by nature fragmented and littered with hyperlinks, distracting advertisements, or dozens of clickable options to choose from. The Internet user is constantly interrupted from his task, which scatters his thoughts, weakens his memory, and causes him anxiety.[6] Multitasking, which the Internet encourages, causes cognitive overload, impeding memory and resulting in difficulty of understanding complex ideas. Carr writes, “The Net is making us smarter . . . only if we define intelligence by the Net’s own standards. If we take a broader and more traditional view of intelligence—if we think about the depth of our thought rather than just its speed—we have to come to a different and considerably darker conclusion.”[7] Perhaps human beings can do more and think faster than ever before, but it is at the cost of what the literary society gave to them, a mind that is calm, thoughtful, and not constantly vulnerable to overstimulation.
What TikTok Is Doing to Our Brains
Social media platforms emerged on the Internet in the mid-2000s and were quickly adopted by millennials who were entering college and early adulthood. Within a decade, nearly every grandmother had a Facebook account, and famous animals developed massive social media followings. Each new platform presented a specific form of digital media that shaped its users in distinct ways. TikTok is the most recent social media platform to develop a gigantic user base, giving it the ability to impact much of society, especially younger people who make up a large percentage of the platform’s users.
The “About” page on TikTok’s website reads, “TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video” whose “mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy.”[8] TikTok users may submit videos that range in length from three seconds to three minutes. TikTok surpassed Google as the most popular website in 2021 before settling down to fourth on the list in 2023.[9] The demographics of app users skews young, with 32.5% being nineteen years old or younger.[10] TikTok users spend an average of ninety-five minutes a day on the app; with videos averaging around thirty seconds long, users regularly consume 167–271 videos per day.[11]
TikTok’s “About” page provides evidence that Carr’s thesis that the fragmentation of the Internet overloads the human brain has been proven correct. Before any text, barring the page’s title, the user is presented with three videos playing simultaneously side-by-side. When one video ends, the app “scrolls” to another video, continuing supposedly forever. This example is emblematic of exactly what one receives on TikTok: a never-ending scroll of bite-sized videos ranging from academic mini-lectures to absurd comedy sketches to stories about botched plastic surgeries. The algorithm of TikTok tailors its feed to a particular user, showing him what it thinks he wants to watch based on his likes, scrolls, saves, and shares. This feature, combined with the short-form nature of the videos, causes TikTok to be highly addictive to many users.
Still, TikTok has positive aspects: it can encourage creativity, the open sharing of ideas, and a sense of community with like-minded people. Many artists share music, paintings, poems, and crafts on the app, building online communities that support creative endeavors, often reviving interest in artforms or handcrafts that are in danger of being forgotten in the modern age. The platform uniquely allows a space for individuals to share knowledge, opinions, and beliefs in a way that is otherwise highly limited in our individualized society. But, as Carr argues, one should not ignore the negative aspects of a medium just because it provides some limited benefit. Many of the negative aspects of TikTok align exactly with Carr’s assessment of the Internet’s problems.
First, the extremely short video lengths have wreaked havoc on the attention spans of many people. Carr’s point that the fragmented nature of the Internet has caused attention spans to suffer is demonstrated to the extreme in the example of TikTok. Each video is so short and stimulating that the brain constantly searches for the next thing. With shorter content, much more medias can be digested and produced in a shorter period, leading to an oversaturation of choice and a negative impact on patience and attention.[12] As Carr explains, this immense activity and the need to evaluate and process information constantly distracts the brain from real interpretation.[13]
Second, the fragmented nature of these short videos is exacerbated when one considers other TikTok trends designed to capture one’s attention. Often if a video is longer or contains lots of talking and information, it will be played simultaneously with some visually stimulating content, such as colorful glass bottles being rolled down a staircase or kinetic sand being cut with an iridescent rainbow knife. These videos provide a dopamine hit and cause the brain to multitask so that it can focus longer on more boring and less stimulating content.[14] But, as Carr explains, multitasking threatens our cognitive functioning. Constantly engaging with this type of media causes the brain to become overloaded and to process nearly nothing that is being received.[15]
Third, in addition to the addictive nature of short-form media, the TikTok algorithm promotes addictive behavior. While TikTok’s algorithm is personalized for each user, this personalization does not guarantee that each video will satisfy her. When a user sees something that she likes, her brain releases dopamine; however, not every video meets this criterion, so the user continues to scroll to find something that does. This set-up causes literally addictive behavior, similar to what is caused by a slot machine, resulting in continuous scrolling.[16] As Carr argues, Internet users are constantly seeking increased information and dopamine hits. However, this constant flow of stimuli “short-circuits both conscious and unconscious thought, preventing our minds from thinking either deeply or creatively. Our brain turns into simple single-processing units, quickly shepherding information into consciousness and then back out again.”[17]
Though the amount of formal research on TikTok is low thus far, one can see from what research has been done and from overwhelming anecdotal evidence that Carr’s thesis on what the Internet does to our brains is accurate. While this article has touched only on attention and addictiveness in relation to Carr’s thesis, many other harms also result from TikTok and other social media platforms, such as increased suicidal ideation, self-harm, lower mental health, loneliness, dangerous and physically harmful trends and challenges, misinformation, and other very serious issues.[18] TikTok and other social media platforms like it are physically changing the way our brains work, lowering attention spans, and fragmenting thought.[19]
Consequently, we would be wise to approach these platforms with an abundance of caution. At first, the benefits of these platforms may appear to outweigh the drawbacks: I personally have learned many new skills and been creatively inspired by videos and creators on TikTok. And sometimes a person just wants to kick back and watch a funny video. But when we scratch even a little bit beneath the surface, we should be compelled to build in safeguards against the dangers of apps like TikTok. Set time limits on your apps or just delete them for a few days and evaluate how you feel. In my experience, the immediate mental clarity and sense of freedom I felt when I deleted TikTok from my phone far outweighed the benefits I received from it. We may not realize how strong a hold TikTok or any other Internet platform has on us until we have made the choice to step back.
We would do well to pay close attention to the negative effects of social media and other Internet platforms and implement appropriate measures to mitigate these effects where we can. Since many TikTok users are young children, society has yet to see the long-term effects of these brain changes. It is sobering to imagine the fully Internet-based society that is to come.
About the Author: Anna Pinson lives in Gallatin, TN, where she works as the Marketing and Communications Assistant at Welch College. She holds a B.A. in English and is pursuing her M.A. in humanities with an emphasis in theater at Welch, where she also volunteers as dramaturg and lighting designer in the theater department. She attends Immanuel Church in Gallatin, where she teaches the preschool Sunday school class, coaches a children’s drama group, and plays piano for worship services. In her personal time, you will find her knitting, sewing, or acting in local community theater.
[1] Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), 26.
[2] Carr, The Shallows, 35.
[3] Carr, The Shallows, 64.
[4] Carr, The Shallows, 75.
[5] Carr, The Shallows, 45.
[6] Carr, The Shallows, 132.
[7] Carr, The Shallows, 141.
[8] TikTok, “About | TikTok – Real Short Videos,” Tiktok.com (TikTok, 2024), https://www.tiktok.com/about?lang=en.
[9] João Tomé and Sofia Cardita, “In 2021, the Internet Went for TikTok, Space and Beyond,” The Cloudflare Blog, December 20, 2021, https://blog.cloudflare.com/popular-domains-year-in-review-2021/; João Tomé, “From Google to Generative AI: Ranking Top Internet Services in 2023,” The Cloudflare Blog, December 12, 2023, https://blog.cloudflare.com/radar-2023-year-in-review-internet-services/.
[10] Christian Montag, Haibo Yang, and Jon D. Elhai, “On the Psychology of TikTok Use: A First Glimpse from Empirical Findings,” Frontiers in Public Health 9, no. 1 (March 16, 2021): 2, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.641673.
[11] Nathan Crispo, “TikTok Brain: Can We Save Children’s Attention Spans?” Richmond Journal of Law and Technology (March 6, 2024), https://jolt.richmond.edu/2024/03/06/tiktok-brain-can-we-save-childrens-attention-spans/#_ftn14.
[12] Jui Zaveri, “TikTok and the Death of the Attention Span,” The Oxford Blue, May 23, 2023, https://theoxfordblue.co.uk/tiktok-and-the-death-of-the-attention-span/.
[13] Carr, The Shallows, 122.
[14] Sofia Barnett, “The Newest Threat to Your Attention Span? TikTok ‘Dual’ Videos,” Wired, August 10, 2023, https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-dual-videos-attention-spans/.
[15] Claudia Flynn, “Your Ability to Focus Has Been Sabotaged by TikTok & Instagram,” Michigan Daily, October 23, 2023, https://www.michigandaily.com/opinion/failing-focus/.
[16] John Koetsier, “Digital Crack Cocaine: The Science behind TikTok’s Success,” Forbes, January 18, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/01/18/digital-crack-cocaine-the-science-behind-tiktoks-success/?sh=26c4916678be.
[17] Carr, The Shallows, 119.
[18] Kari Paul, “What TikTok Does to Your Mental Health: ‘It’s Embarrassing We Know so Little,’” Guardian, October 30, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/30/tiktok-mental-health-social-media; Amnesty International, “Global: TikTok’s ‘for You’ Feed Risks Pushing Children and Young People towards Harmful Mental Health Content,” Amnesty International, November 7, 2023, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/tiktok-risks-pushing-children-towards-harmful-content/#:~:text=The%20technical%20research%20revealed%20that; Anthony Yeung, Enoch Ng, and Elia Abi-Jaoude, “TikTok and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Cross-Sectional Study of Social Media Content Quality,” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 67, no. 12 (February 23, 2022): 070674372210828, https://doi.org/10.1177/07067437221082854.
[19] Koetsier, “Digital Crack Cocaine.”
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