By Aidan McElhany, Jake Cipres, Ashley Abercrombie, and Fernando Calvillo Alcantar
With the rising popularity of social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, many have expressed their concerns about how the excessive use of these platforms will affect our mental health and other aspects of our well-being. In particular, the short-form content present on TikTok and YouTube Shorts has been criticized for its potential negative effects on users’ attention spans. Our research study aims to find a correlation between the use of social media platforms and its influence on the attention spans of media users. The study will examine two variables in regard to social media usage. The first is which social media platforms are most widely used. The second is how much time media users spend on each platform on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Additionally, the study will examine signs of a shorter attention span, such as restlessness, inability to focus for long periods of time, etc. The data will be gathered through a convenience sample survey consisting of students at California State University, Fullerton.
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The Society for Communications Research 