TikTok's Impact on Privacy and Cognition

Summary

"TikTok may be bad for privacy, but is it also harming our cognitive abilities?" Colin McCormick, The Conversation (April 6, 2023)

The article examines how social media platforms — particularly TikTok — may be damaging our cognitive abilities by exploiting the brain's attention mechanisms. It draws on attention research and cognitive science to explain how app design keeps users hooked and what the cognitive costs might be.

Designed with attention in mind

Social media companies constantly track which content users engage with — not just what they "like," but how long they spend on each piece of content. The app uses this data to methodically present related content, keeping users on the platform as long as possible.

Apps now use an endless scroll feature where users simply swipe upwards for the next piece of content. This continuous stream is designed to absorb users into a flow state — a state of deep engagement where we lose our sense of time. While flow states can be advantageous in work settings, social media apps deliberately elicit them to make it harder to leave the platform.

The cost of task-switching

Many people multitask by alternating between work and social media. Research on middle and high school students found they spend, on average, less than six minutes on a task before switching to social media or texting.

The problem lies in switch costs — a term describing the negative effect that re-engaging with a task has on cognition. Every time a person opens social media while working or studying, they will be slower and more error-prone for a period when returning to the task. People who engage with multiple forms of media at once show general decreases in sustained attention.

Twenty continuous minutes of work is significantly more productive than four five-minute blocks separated by social media breaks.

Executive functioning and impulsivity

There is limited research on social media's impact on executive functioning, but studies on social media addiction offer insights. Those who meet the criteria for social media addiction tend to be more impulsive than non-addicted users, as measured by risk-assessment tasks — they make more risky choices associated with long-term losses.

People in the studies were also more impulsive after being exposed to social media during testing sessions. However, individuals with social media addiction functioned normally on many other cognitive assessment tasks, suggesting impulsivity is the main cognitive component affected.

The good news (and emerging trends)

There are possible cognitive benefits for some users: researchers found social media use in middle-aged and older adults can help improve executive functioning by providing increased access to social connection, offering a support channel to those at risk for cognitive decline due to social isolation.

The article also notes emerging trends worth watching. One study found that hashtags in 2013 stayed in the top 50 charts for an average of 17.5 hours — but by 2016, that had dropped to 11.9 hours, suggesting our capacity to engage attention shrinks as more content becomes available. A newer TikTok trend of split-screening multiple videos at once reflects a growing preference for content that demands less attentional effort.

Vault connections

• Capitalism and Schizophrenia — TikTok's algorithmic flow state and micro-telemetry capture illustrate Deleuze and Guattari's "desiring-production": the application connects human subconscious desire directly to a machinic assemblage, deterritorializing sustained focus into continuous streams of fragmented engagement.
• Shoshana Zuboff-The Age of Surveillance Capitalism — TikTok's algorithmic extraction of micro-engagement telemetry (dwell time, swipe velocity) to induce continuous flow states exemplifies Zuboff's "economies of action" and the "modification imperative," demonstrating how platforms instrumentalize human cognition for commercial predictability.
• The Attention Economy — The article's analysis of how platforms track attention and engineer flow states to keep users hooked is a direct case study of the attention economy in action, where human focus is the primary commodity being extracted and monetized.
• Downside of Digital Distraction — A business English worksheet that covers the same territory — notification costs, task-switching, cognitive load, and mitigation strategies — providing a concise companion to the cognitive science detailed here.
• Neuroproductivity — The article's findings on switch costs and sustained attention connect directly to this note's applied framework for reclaiming cognitive sovereignty from extractive digital design.
• The Flow State — The article explains how social media apps deliberately elicit flow states to trap users — this note explores the neuroscience of flow as the optimal cognitive condition that digital distraction systematically destroys.
• The Great Classroom Screen Debate - Device Bans vs. Digital Integration in Higher Education — Both notes address the cognitive costs of digital distraction in learning environments, with the classroom debate note providing the educational policy dimension to the cognitive science presented here.
• DM - Social Media Marketing — The article's description of how social media platforms track engagement and algorithmically optimize content provides the technical backdrop for the marketing strategies this note explores.