It’s 2005, and the computer room has been vibrating for two hours straight, my fingers gliding across the keyboard copying HTML and Java code while jamming to the latest R&B CD I burned. No, I’m not a computer programming wiz — I’m designing my MySpace page. I spend countless hours choosing the perfect song, trying to figure out why my About section header isn’t bold, and how to get those glittery GIFs to work.

I was in sixth grade when MySpace became popular, and today, my niece, an avid TikTok-er, is the same age I was back then. So after spending most of the summer rejecting my niece’s urgent requests to join in on her trending TikTok dances, I did what any researcher would do — start with “me-search.” I asked my niece what her TikTok would tell someone about her that they wouldn’t otherwise know.

“I’m trendy. I’m into fashion. I like to dance,” she said.

Thinking back to my constant MySpace page redesigning, Top 8 tweaks, and song choice updates, my obsession with getting the page just right wasn’t all that different from Gen Z and Gen Alpha’s TikTok fixation.

Granted, I could easily shut down the computer, leave the room, go hang out with friends, do homework, and not think about it until a new song hit me so deeply I thought, “this should be on my page!”

In contrast, observing my niece and her friends today, I wonder why kids just can’t get off that particular app.

Yes, there have been relative social and cultural changes since the mid-2000s, but there is one inimitable variable: the COVID-19 shutdowns. We heard a lot about Gen Z or “Zoomers,” during the COVID-19 pandemic, coming of age and entering college in virtual school classrooms. But the pandemic shutdowns also forced the newest generation at the time, Gen Alpha, to interact in the virtual world. I remember my niece’s last few months of kindergarten on Zoom. For career day, she said she wanted to be a “brain doctor,” so we dressed her up as a surgeon. Watching the kids excitedly scan their classmates’ Zoom boxes to guess each other’s costumes. Between this virtual reality and TikTok’s tweaks to its algorithms and features, we have the perfect storm for what psychologists call “short video addiction.”

This timeline doesn’t start with TikTok, but its accessible video creation lowered the stakes when the mass exodus from what used to be Twitter turned users toward other platforms that prioritize influencers and sponsored content in its feeds, making the average user a content- consuming doom scroller instead of a participant in —– our not-so-social —– social media. Over the past few years, surveys of user behavior have shown a downward trend in people posting and an increase in influencer and product ads. When TikTok’s low-stakes algorithms made going viral seem attainable for any user who can hop on a trending sound or dance, the rest of its competitors iterated — Instagram Reels, FaceBook Reels, YouTube Shorts — all on an eternally refreshing loop of new content.

With how much time and energy children today pour into videos and social media, it prompts the question of whether we can harness that for something potentially a little more productive: education.

Scroll Science

Can learning be as addictive as TikTok?

Well, let’s look at the science behind why it’s so addictive. You’ve probably heard about dopamine. It isn’t just our brain’s pleasure chemical — it’s also the learning signal that releases after unexpected rewards, especially from low-effort activity, like swiping from reel to reel and finding even better DIY project ideas you’ve been wanting to get to.

We experience either positive, negative, or zero reward prediction error, which keeps us striving for more rewards. Neuroscience research gives us a clear picture of what’s happening in our brains when we’re watching short-form videos. Our brains are constantly predicting what will happen next — it’s one of the ways we stay safe and make sense of the world. Reward prediction error is that chemical magic that happens when our prediction is wrong. It’s the same basic mechanism used to design slot machines and other variable-reward systems.

With endless video loops, when the next clip is better than we expected — the kind that’s so spot-on you immediately save it or send it to the group chat — our brain gives us a small dopamine boost. When a video is boring, we get no dopamine. When it’s disappointing, dopamine briefly dips. That constant cycle of maybe this next one will be great, new information, or useful is what keeps us scrolling.With every social media feed carefully curated for each user, there are dozens of algorithms learning what holds your gaze to feed you more of what will keep you on the app or website. For me, it’s funny parenting reels and home improvement YouTube Shorts. Of course I need to see the difference between galvanized and stainless steel screws for my next DIY project. That’s the sense of novelty and variable rewards that keeps us scrolling.

Lastly, because the feeds just keep feeding more content through the infinite scroll feature, there’s no natural stopping point, so there is never a cue to stop and end the scrolling session.

Recent neuroscience studies show that high TikTok usage can activate brain regions tied to impulse and habit formation. In another recent study, researchers looked at electroencephalogram, or EEG tests, to assess the relationship between youth and young adults’ frequent short video consumption and reduced attention control, higher levels of stress, and learning fatigue. These are the makings of short video addiction, a condition researchers suggest is worthy of a spot in the DSM-5.

We Can Make Learning As Addictive

But should we?

It sounds like a good idea. It reminds me of when adults would say, “if only you knew your times tables like you know those rap songs.” But in this case, it’s not as simple as putting math on hip-hop beats.

Imagine your child or student’s TikTok infinite scroll were actually mini-lessons on tectonic plates, followed by how a basketball arc follows a parabola, and each 30‑second video ended with a satisfying “aha” moment and a surprising new fact. The algorithm could learn what students enjoy and what they are struggling with, then feed them culturally relevant examples with humor and well-timed reveals. It would feel great, and your students might start saying, “Just one more reel,” as they send you GIFs and memes — seemingly addicted to learning!

Let’s look deeper at the science of learning. These techniques would likely keep students engaged, producing frequent dopamine hits, but for information to register as learning, though, we need a little more than dopamine and surprise rewards. Learning requires effortful processing, retrieval, and opportunities to apply ideas in new situations. Otherwise, our educational TikTok app prototype could fall into the loop of attention trap, making it easy to go from education to edu-tainment without the friction of problem-solving that makes learning stick.

This is where the attention trap shows up: a stream of highly optimized, bite-sized “aha” moments can keep eyes glued to the screen while quietly removing the productive friction of wrestling with problems, making choices, and getting feedback — the very processes that strengthen memory, understanding, and transfer. When the system does all the cognitive heavy lifting, students get edu‑tainment: they feel informed and interested, but they have not built the durable mental models that let them explain, use, or remember the ideas later.

Learning takes more than clever hooks and sticky formats. Digital experiences can be engaging — even addictive — but if they skip struggle and retrieval, they risk producing the illusion of learning rather than the real thing. As educators, the goal is not to compete with short‑form platforms on sheer stickiness, but to design experiences where attention is channeled into thinking, problem‑solving, and revisiting ideas over time.

Education apps can be addictive, but I’m not sure we want them to be. Then there might be too many people like me — addicted to the infinite scroll of YouTube Shorts on neuroscience and psychology research.