We encounter more information every day, yet find it harder to keep one question in mind for long enough. What we may be losing is not just attention, but the process that turns attention into understanding, judgement and lasting ability.
For several years, I have been watching a change. Social media, short video and algorithmic feeds have become ever more developed. People see far more each day than they once did, yet many seem to have less patience with a difficult problem.
Before a long essay has unfolded, the finger is ready to scroll. If a conversation slows down, the mind begins looking for fresh stimulation. After a few pages of a book, messages, recommendations and the next screen are already competing for attention. We are not failing to receive information. Quite the opposite. We may receive too much of it, too quickly, with each item demanding an immediate response.
I do not want to say simply that short video ‘damages the brain.’ That is a medical claim and needs evidence far stricter than everyday observation. At the level of function, however, one change is already clear. Intelligence has not vanished, but it is becoming harder to keep it running continuously and harder to consolidate it into something stable.
Intelligence has duration as well as height
We usually speak of intelligence as a fairly static capacity: how quickly someone responds, how well they remember, or whether they can see a pattern at once. Intelligence in real life has another dimension. How long can it continue?
Some people have brilliant flashes of thought. They respond quickly, make many associations and can produce an interesting view within seconds. But the peak is brief and the next piece of information soon carries it away. Others may start more slowly but can remain with the same problem. Only as the context becomes complete does their thinking move deeper.
I call the understanding, judgements, models, methods or work actually produced per unit of time ‘intellectual power.’ It is not the number of thoughts that cross the mind or the pages viewed in a day. It is the amount of cognitive work left behind that can still be used later.
Seen this way, intelligence differs not only at the peak but in what happens afterwards. Can thought remain continuous? Can someone stay rather than immediately quit when the problem becomes difficult? Can an unresolved question keep growing in the mind? Each changes what finally remains.
Switching attention is not free
Moving from a book to a message and then from the message to a video looks like nothing more than changing screens. The brain, however, must reload the goal, rules and context. The previous task does not disappear the instant we switch. Some of it remains as ‘attention residue’ and occupies cognitive resources.
That helps explain why frequent task switching can leave someone feeling busy for hours without having truly finished anything, even when each task received several minutes. Experiments have found that after a switch, attention may remain with the unfinished task and impair performance on the next one. Heavy media multitasking is also associated with differences in cognitive control, though such studies show correlation more often than causation and should not be exaggerated. See the Stanford research onmedia multitasking and cognitive controland the experiment onthe mere presence of a smartphone and available cognitive capacity.
The expensive part is not only the seconds lost in switching. It is the repeated restart. A difficult problem often requires a warm-up, the construction of context, the discovery of contradictions and the revision of assumptions before anything valuable appears. If we leave whenever thought has just begun, we remain forever at the entrance.
Dopamine is not a ‘pleasure toxin’
Discussions of short video often reduce the problem to ‘too much dopamine.’ The phrase is intuitive but inaccurate. Dopamine is not simply a liquid form of pleasure, much less a toxin that burns the brain on contact. It participates in motivation, learning and reward prediction, especially in signalling whether an outcome is better or worse than expected. Classic studies describe this asreward prediction error。
The concern is not dopamine itself but our adaptation to the rhythm of feedback. Short-video platforms supply a continuous stream of new images, people, conflicts and outcomes, while the cost of leaving is almost zero. A user never has to wait long for one item. One swipe gives them another attempt.
Over time, the reference point for stimulation may shift. A book, an ordinary conversation or a long project has not suddenly become more boring. It simply cannot supply change and feedback at the same speed. Slow things then become increasingly hard to tolerate.
Why cognitive peaks keep getting shorter
Fragmentation has another easily missed effect. The same brief stimulus cannot produce the same response forever. At first, a new item may hold someone for tens of seconds. Later, the same level of stimulation is quickly dismissed as dull. To keep the excitement alive, content must become faster, stranger and more intense, while the user swipes ever more quickly.
We can understand this as diminishing marginal effect. Each stimulus still creates a small peak, but the peak lasts less time and leaves less inside the cognitive structure. External input grows stronger while internal consolidation grows weaker.
This creates an illusion. Because people are always receiving and reacting, they feel continuously active. But activity is not thought. A reaction is pulled along by the present stimulus. Thought requires us to retain the question after the stimulus has gone, connect it with other material and give it a structure of our own.
If daily cognition consists mainly of many peaks that decay at speed, a person may end the day subjectively exhausted with very little effective work left behind. Over time, the loss is not only the hours spent in the feed. It is the ability to enter a deep state again.
More information does not mean more intellectual capital
I use ‘intellectual capital’ for the long-term stock of knowledge, skills, models, methods, experience and work. It is not the total amount of information encountered. Information becomes something a person can use later only after it has been understood, reconstructed and recalled repeatedly.
The distinction matters. Someone can save thousands of essays, hear countless opinions and repeat popular concepts fluently, yet remain unable to explain a problem independently. Information passed through them without becoming part of their structure.
Research on learning offers an instructive example in ‘retrieval practice.’ Repeated reading creates familiarity, but actively retrieving, reorganising and expressing material from memory usually does more for long-term retention. See the research onretrieval practice and long-term learning. Familiarity ‘looks like understanding.’ Reconstruction comes closer to ‘this has become part of me.’
Intellectual capital can grow and dissipate. Understanding and practice consolidate present cognition. Forgetting, long periods of disuse and frequent switching make an existing structure vague, loose or difficult to call upon. A person can therefore encounter vast quantities of information every day without a matching growth in intellectual capital. It may even decline slowly.
That is why extended thought is becoming so valuable. Its value is not a function of length. Two hours of empty video can remain shallow, while three minutes of speech may condense years of thought. What is scarce is the willingness to keep a question in mind long enough for different materials to meet, to let a temporary contradiction remain, and not to leave simply because the answer has not yet appeared.
Short video mainly changes the continuity of thought. AI presents a different problem. Sometimes it does not fragment the process but skips it. The system’s answer may be better, while the person may not form stronger judgement as a result. That question belongs to Part II.