Is short-form content harmful to us?
Does short-form content affect our minds?
Why is short-form content not being appreciated much?
Well,
This is something to worry about buddy!
What's Inside:
Long-Form VS Short-Form Content
Role of Human Emotion in Content Consumption
Evolution of Human Emotions and Content
Connection of Short-Form Content With Human Emotions
How Short-Form Content Affect Us?
Conclusion
Long-Form VS Short-Form Content
Long-form of content or the normal content which we can see is the major source of information provided by various providers for you to understand, learn, and apply those things in your life.
A long-form of content is basically a detailed understanding of something provided to you so that you can understand the concepts better and take benefits from them.
Short-form of content is just like a summary of the long-form content that only contains the importance of the data presented and its usefulness.
A short form of content will provide you an idea of something which is not known to you.
Short Content is an idea giver, whereas long content is an idea explainer. You can just gain an idea about a thing from short content, but to understand the idea, you will always need long content.
For example, this complete blog is a long-form of content, but the “Topics” section above is a short-form of content giving an idea about what is there in the blog.
You and I both know that short content is trending and engaging users more today, doesn’t matter which platform they are using.
But, what is the reason?
The simple reason is “human emotion“.
Yes, you read it correctly.
Role of Human Emotion in Content Consumption
Human emotion is playing a vital role in the type of content the human wants to consume.
Each piece of content (no matter whether it is a blog post, an image, a video, or a podcast) you consume in your daily life must contain at least one of the following factors:
- Interest: If you have an interest in a particular type of content, you will eventually consume it.
For example, I like Cricket. So, if any content related to Cricket comes in front of me, I will always go ahead and consume it.
- Need: Again, if you are searching for some information regarding any subject or topic, you will go ahead and consume content related to that stuff.
For example, I wanted to write this blog, so I went ahead and researched the topic, and consume the content related to short-form content.
- Impression: Sometimes, we come across an appealing image, video thumbnail, or some catchy content, which drives our attention towards it and we start consuming such content.
Human reacts according to what emotion he/she is developing on that moment. And that reaction results in what type of content he would like to consume.
Having a lovely day, you will eventually watch some good comedy web series or play and have fun with your family.
And…
If your day is going messy, you will start watching some news or stuff about politics and then criticize the government for its working. ( Just Kidding 😜)
Evolution of Human Emotions and Content
Humans deal with different kinds of emotions every now and then.
Every day, you and I, as humans, handle a lot of emotions.
These emotions and their reaction bring us out as a character in ourselves.
Emotions first came into existence where ancient people understood how to communicate and share feelings. This turned into an understanding that there are two main types of emotions.
One is Happy, and the other is Sad.
Happy humans celebrated their happiness through sharing with each other, having fun together, etc.
On the other hand, sad humans made themselves apart from people and didn’t share with people what they were suffering from until asked.
The era changed and so the way of human emotions.
The era of books and publications started, where people use to read stories, news, articles, etc., and react to what was written as emotions.
Then came the time of radios, where people use to hear stories of other unknown people and get connected to their emotions.
Some stories were life-changing, whereas some were just for entertainment.
Then came the revolutionary time of television, where emotions were picturized and presented.
People connected more to Television than Books and publications, as the long books stories, and news reading was presented in a picturized format and people got engaged to it.
Then came the Internet.
Well, it was not famous in the starting. But, it grew fast and people started getting connected with all forms of content in a single click.
The revolution of the Internet brought the idea of Online Publications, Videos, etc.
People started to engage in online content which was first available on Computers and slowly made it through mobile phones.
So, people’s emotions, which were lasting long, slowly started lasting less.
Connection of Short-Form Content With Human Emotions
Books made people read longer and understand things better.
Radios brought those stories of books in a much lesser time, so people got connected with them.
TVs presented the picturized presentation of the same book. And again, a 3-day reading of the book was just brought to a 3-hour movie.
The Internet came and started giving just the summarization of the book, and/or the main part of movies. This made content consumption shorter.
So, human emotions, which could sustain a 3-day long book reading, changed to a 3-minute summary. And now, the human wants something new, because he gets bored in a little span of time.
That’s what we see in real life.
Take an example of a relationship. Why many relationships we see today don’t last long?
The reason is again, the emotions. People want change and that too in a very short span of time. And that is affecting their life, relations, and whatnot.
Now today, Social Media has control over most of our emotions. What we see, we hear, we engage with; everything influences us.
Today, from Youtube Videos to Facebook Posts, to Instagram Photos, we have decreased our span of time in consuming content.
An article titled “You now have a shorter attention span than a Goldfish” quotes
“The average attention span for the notoriously ill-focused goldfish is nine seconds, but according to a new study from Microsoft Corp., people now generally lose concentration after eight seconds, highlighting the effects of an increasingly digitalized lifestyle on the brain.“
And why this is happening, because this short-content ideology is making our mind to be ready for new content in just a fraction of seconds and that makes us bore when we read long-form content or listen to a big podcast, or watching a long video.
How Short-Form Content Affect us?
Short-form of content basically converts your mind to an unwanted state where you want to change your focus to something new very fast as you are not able to focus on a single thing for a long time.
In daily life, you go through Instagram’s Reels, Youtube’s “Shorts Videos”, Titok Videos (if you are not in India), etc. These things have created your mind to make you divert your focus from one thing to another within some seconds (no even a minute).
And this thing is affecting your daily routine.
Working professionals could not focus regularly on their work. They take breaks between short intervals of work (Read the line again). That is causing them issues in working efficiently. And in the end, bringing their performance decreases which eventually results in stress.
Students could not concentrate on their studies for a long period, or could not focus regularly on what is being taught in the class. This eventually results in not understanding concepts and in the end, getting bad grades.
Since our emotions are changing fast, we have started to react to things very fast.
People are losing patience level more nowadays than before. People getting short-tempered is very common.
The Conclusion
Short content is a change needed to improve our knowledge in terms of search capability. But, long-form content can never be dead.
Human consumption of content should increase in terms of time/content.
Time of content should be increase so that human mental stability could be increased.
What do you think about the Short-form of content according to time consumption? Let me know in the comments.
