Evaluating influences of Tik Tok on NEU freshman students’ attention span

EVALUATING INFLUENCES OF TIK TOK ON NEU FRESHMAN STUDENTS’

ATTENTION SPAN

Hong Anh V.N, Thu Hue, T.Linh

Actuary, Faculty of Mathematical Economics

English 100

Do Kieu Lan

January 12th, 2023

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Evaluating influences of Tik Tok on NEU freshman students’ attention span

EVALUATING INFLUENCES OF TIK TOK ON NEU FRESHMAN STUDENTS’

ATTENTION SPAN

Introduction

For the past few years, social media platforms have played an irreplaceable role in the

world’s daily life, starting from the Covid-19 lockdowns when people were stuck at home for

weeks and only able to entertain and communicate with others using online platforms.

TikTok is also not an exception, it has recently gained the reputation of one of the most

popular social platforms around the world, especially to students and teenagers. As hosting a

variety of of short-form user videos with the duration from 15 seconds to 10 minutes, as well

as its recommendation algorithm that delivers content based on users’ viewing preferences,

TikTok has not only considerably impacted to the economy, the music industry and

businesses, but also become a significant threat to human’s mental well-being and behaviors.

Students and teenagers are individuals that expose themselves to TikTok for the longest

period of time daily. Therefore, it is clear that all the influences of TikTok can easily be seen

through this group. When it comes to beneficial impacts, TikTok is a quick and convenient

source of information for youngsters to update. It also gives students tips in study or in other

aspects, which better their lives. But when considering the disadvantageous side, TikTok

poses a threat to university students' mental health and lifestyle if users are not aware of this

influence. One of the most severe and noticeable impacts is that the concentration time of

students who watch TikTok regularly is shorter compared to fellows who do not.

In Vietnam, TikTok became all the rage as a means of entertainment during the first

lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. After that, this app gained more and more

popularity and appeared in almost every youngster’s mobile phone. Students account for the

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Evaluating influences of Tik Tok on NEU freshman students’ attention span

largest proportion of TikTok’s users in Vietnam since it is a convenient place for them to

learn, share and express themselves by watching and posting video contents.

Students in NEU are not an exception. Almost every student here uses TikTok on a daily

basis and it plays an important role in promoting clubs and events of the university. Hence,

the foretold effects on students, including shortened attention span, are inevitable in NEU.

Review of Literature

Tik Tok. TikTok is a social media platform published in China in September 2016 that

allows users to create and share short-form videos, typically set to music. It was created by

the Chinese IT company ByteDance and was first called Douyin among Chinese users. The

app later became internationally available as TikTok in September 2017, and it quickly rose

to prominence, especially among younger people. Users have the option of discovering,

watching, and interacting with content made by other users on the platform in addition to

generating and sharing their own films.

According to David Curry from BussinessofApp, TikTok remained the most popular app

worldwide, with 656 million downloads in 2021. App monitoring firm App Annie shows that

the average time per user spent on TikTok in 2020  is higher than the most used social media

platform for videos ever which is Youtube (Marianne Garvey, CNN entertainment). As Tik

Tok keeps becoming more and more popular, several influences on its users have been

witnessed and researched. When the app was invented, videos were required to have a

duration of 15 seconds or shorter, and now they have updated the most extended length one

video should be up to 10 minutes.

Short attention span. A short attention span means somebody who easily gets distracted

from the current task when there is something interrupting he/she such as notifications, the

sound of someone else entering the room, etc. Most seen signs of a short attention span are

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Evaluating influences of Tik Tok on NEU freshman students’ attention span

having a hard time focusing on tasks, struggling with reading long texts or watching long

videos, leaving tasks partially done, etc (Dan Brennan, 2021).

There is a widespread belief that today's population, especially younger generations, has

shorter attention spans than in the past. The average attention span may have shrunk over

time, according to some studies, although it is unclear whether this is because of adjustments

in how people process information or because of other variables. The length of one's attention

span can differ significantly from person to person and can rely on various elements, such as

age, interests, and the type of activity being done.  In general, it is believed that when given

information that is uninteresting or irrelevant to them, people are more prone to become

distracted.

According to Chloe Martin, after some interviews with different kinds of people using

TikTok every day in their life, he saw that most of them found it hard to feel interested in

longer videos on other social media platforms. Some of them have a habit of double-speeding

long videos, and others said that they would not watch the whole video because those did not

capture their attention. The “For you” page also makes a large number of people stick their

eyes on the screen all day long instead of spending time on other necessities. Those cases

alarm people to stop using Tik Tok too much, or our attention span would be heavily

affected.  

Reviewing the literature leads back to the question: What should we do to reduce the impacts

of TikTok on our attention span to the least? The goal of the project is to provide a deeper

insight into several influences of TikTok on its users’ mental health and lifestyle, especially

shortening their attention spans, so as to introduce possible solutions to minimize these

disadvantageous impacts.

Methodology

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Evaluating influences of Tik Tok on NEU freshman students’ attention span

This paper discusses the possible negative impacts that Tik Tok (one of the most popular

social media platforms worldwide) - has had on National Economics University first-year

students’ attention span. Recently, there has arisen the question of whether this app shortens

people’s ability to pay attention or not, as it hosts a series of short from-users videos that

mainly last just between 10 to 60 seconds. Our group chose a 25% random selection of the

total number of freshmen at NEU in the school year 2022-2023 and collected information for

our research via an online questionnaire.

Me and my teammates randomly collected data from 1,500 first-year students by requiring

them to fill in an online form that included questions relating to their habits of using Tik Tok

and the possible impacts on either themselves or the people around them. We believed that

online questionnaires were a more efficient tool than interviewing to gather data from

participants for two reasons. Firstly, this method was more time-saving since we did not have

to spend time interviewing. Secondly, questionnaires were more convenient for both

participants and us as they could fill in the form whenever and wherever they wanted. Also,

we could analyze the information more effortlessly thanks to the autogenerated statistics and

charts.

The questionnaire was designed for students who use Tik Tok and those who do not so that

our team could compare the differences between these two groups. We divided the form into

three parts: one for students who use Tik Tok, one for those who do not, and one for rating

the app. There were nine questions for Tik Tok users and five questions for non-users. Our

team asked participants to choose given answers instead of making them write or type their

own to make it easier for them to complete the survey.

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Evaluating influences of Tik Tok on NEU freshman students’ attention span

Concerning techniques for analyzing data, a mixed methodological method between

qualitative and quantitative methodologies was the most suitable. This choice was due to the

inclusion of statistics and investigation behavior and attitude towards Tik Tok.

This chapter started by restating the topic before answering why our team chose a

questionnaire and not interviewing. Then, the framework of the questionnaire was given out.

As for data analysis techniques, we used a mixed-method methodology to make the best out

of our information. The next chapter will discuss further the mentioned topic by applying the

chosen methodology.