Seeing Your Mindless Face: How Viewing One's Live Self Interrupts Mindless Short-Form Video Scrolling
For app designers and researchers addressing addictive media use, this work provides practical guidelines for self-awareness interventions, though the finding that a black screen outperforms explicit self-cues is incremental.
This study tested whether self-related cues (live camera, selfie, name, black screen) can disrupt mindless short-form video scrolling. In a lab experiment (N=84), all cues effectively helped users stop viewing, but the black screen (control) unexpectedly led to the highest intention to use the app.
The widespread, addictive consumption of short-form videos, which allegedly causes "brain rot," has become an urgent public concern. This study proposes that self-related cues serve as an intrinsic, self-reflective strategy that enhances self-control over media overuse. We developed an app that de-immerses users by periodically displaying different self-related cues (live camera, selfie, name in text, and black screen) and tested their effects in a laboratory experiment (N=84). Overall, findings show that self-related cues effectively disrupt mindless viewing, enabling users to voluntarily stop short-form video consumption. Interestingly, the black screen, intended as a control, elicited the greatest intention to use the app: Participants noted in the follow-up interview that they preferred the subtler reflection on a black screen over the explicit image from a live camera. The findings offer practical design guidelines for implementing self-awareness interventions in mobile contexts, including which modalities work best and how real-time contextual anchoring enhances effectiveness.