I’ve noticed YouTube specifically has become more addictive, I never used to be one to sit and scroll for long durations before but I often catch myself spending way too long on shorts now
Even people or older generations seem to be getting sucked in nowadays
Giving the gray-scale thing a try, I think the thing that sets modern short form content apart is how fast, snappy and easy to scroll it is though
Rarely have more than half a second of downtime between shorts, I think that is the issue recently
The short form content is doing something else, it is not directly the short length that is to blame. It is the information overload and the methods and information used to incite some form of emotion from you, and to solicit engagement. That is the endgame you have to win against.
Information overload can also happen with 10 minute videos. You have to stay away from overloading the brain constantly, and give it proper breaks, and even disengage from visually stimulating content to keep a stable, spike-less dopamine feed to your brain.