I've got a hypothesis that the reason short-form video like TikTok became dominant is because of the decline in reading instruction (eg. usage of whole-word instruction over phonics) that started in 1998-2000. The timing largely lines up: the rise of video content started around 2013, just as these kids were entering their teenage years. Media has significant economies of scale and network effects (i.e. it is much more profitable to target the lowest common denominator than any niche group), and so if you get a large number of teenagers who have difficulty with reading, media will adjust to provide them content that they can consume effortlessly.

Anecdotally, I hear lots of people talking about the short attention span of Zoomers and Gen Alpha (which they define as 2012+; I'd actually shift the generation boundary to 2017+ for the reasons I'm about to mention). I don't see that with my kid's 2nd-grade classmates: many of them walk around with their nose in a book and will finish whole novels. They're the first class after phonics was reintroduced in the 2023-2024 kindergarten year; every single kid knew how to read by the end of kindergarten. Basic fluency in skills like reading and math matters.

My counter argument is that did not happen in the Austrian school system and people consume short form video just the same

The short-form video craze started in the U.S. though, right? And with firms like Vine and SnapChat rather than TikTok. Like I said, media (particularly social media) has strong network effects, so if you get a critical mass of early users you can take over the rest of the population even if the initial spark that attracted them doesn't apply to the rest of the world. Same as how Facebook started out at the most prestigious dorm in the most prestigious college of the U.S. - by the time it got to senior citizens they don't care about college prestige, but they got on because their grandchildren were sharing their photos on it, and the reason the grandchildren got on was because they wanted to be cooler.

I recognize this is very anecdotal (your observation and mine), but my gen alpha daughter approaching the teenage phase always has her head in a book. She also has a very short attention span.

I think the timing is coincidental.

That was also roughly the time period where mobile phones and their networks started to become reliably able to stream video at scale. That seems like a more plausible proximate cause for the timing of the rise of TikTok.

That’s ridiculously US-centric. TikTok is a global phenomenon initiated by a Chinese company. Nothing would be different in the grand scale if there were zero American TikTok users.

Even if that's true, that sub-minute videos are not the apex content, that only goes to prove inevitability. Every idea will be tested and measured; the best-performing ones will survive. There can't be any coordination or consensus like "we shouldn't have that" - the only signal is, "is this still the most performant medium + algorithm mix?"

I feel that the argument here hinges on “performant”

The regulatory, cultural, social, even educational factors surrounding these ideas are what could have made these not inevitable. But changes weren’t made, as there was no power strong enough to enact something meaningful.

Have you seen YouTube's front-page? It's pretty much 20-40min videos full of fluff.

I don't know if you wrote it as a form of satire, but obviously thete is no such thing as "YouTube's front-page". Everyone gets recommended different videos, based on various signals, even when not authenticated.

Shorts are everywhere because it is the most addictive form of media, easy to consume, no effort required to follow through.

More generally I think the problems we got into were inevitable. They are the result of platforms optimizing for their own interests at the expense of both creatives and users, and that is what any company would do.

All the platforms enshittified, they exploit their users first, by ranking addictive content higher, then they also influence creatives by making it clear only those who fit the Algorithm will see top rankings. This happens on Google, YT, Meta, Amazon, Play Store, App Store - it's everywhere. The ranking algorithm is "prompting" humans to make slop. Creatives also optimize for their self interest and spam the platforms.