Insightful paper. Policy/lawmakers needs to take much more input from high-quality, publicly funded (aka unbiased) research and make informed decisions on restricting content type. The social media companies rn are akin to tobacco companies selling products/services to kids (and adults!) with zero meaningful restriction or warnings. There's a mountain of research showing cognitive performance impacts from content consumed through smartphone, especially fluffy, low quality "algorithmic feed" content.
BTW, I still need to use YouTube and this one extension has protected my YouTube experience from being TikTok-ified -- "ShortsBlocker - Remove Shorts from YouTube" [0]
When people do send me random Shorts, I use another browser (consciously) to watch that particular video and shut it back down. You can also pair that with "Block YouTube Feed - Homepage, Sidebar Videos" [1] for another layer of YouTube cruft removal.
Finally, I've also installed "Turn Off YouTube Comments & Live Chat" [2] which keeps me from scrolling down to comments and letting that 'color' my perception of the video -- has restored my own ability to judge the value of a video.
BTW, I still need to use YouTube and this one extension has protected my YouTube experience from being TikTok-ified -- "ShortsBlocker - Remove Shorts from YouTube" [0]
When people do send me random Shorts, I use another browser (consciously) to watch that particular video and shut it back down. You can also pair that with "Block YouTube Feed - Homepage, Sidebar Videos" [1] for another layer of YouTube cruft removal.
Finally, I've also installed "Turn Off YouTube Comments & Live Chat" [2] which keeps me from scrolling down to comments and letting that 'color' my perception of the video -- has restored my own ability to judge the value of a video.
[0] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/shortsblocker-remov...
[1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/block-youtube-feed-...
[2] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/turn-off-youtube-co...