The proliferation of short-video platforms prompts critical investigation of their effects on human cognitive functions. We hypothesized that the frequent, user-driven content shifts inherent to short-video watching impair event segmentation, a cognitive process critical for continuous memory encoding. Combining behavioral, eye-tracking, and self-report data, we revealed that acute exposure to randomly selected short videos was associated with poorer memory for continuous movies, particularly in participants with more frequent daily short-video viewing. This effect was absent after viewing personalized short videos and did not apply to static image encoding tasks. Intersubject correlation analysis of eye movements revealed that random short video watching attenuated eye synchronization at event boundaries. Furthermore, Hidden Markov Model analysis indicated that personalized and random short videos induced qualitatively different latent event structures. These findings indicate that the algorithmic curation of content, not merely the short-video format, is a crucial factor shaping event segmentation and subsequent memory.
Li et al. (2025) studied this question.