Young people who binge-watch TikTok find it harder "to participate in activities that don't offer instant gratification," When young people do activities that require "prolonged focus," like reading, they use something called "directed attention," a function that begins in the prefrontal cortex, "the part of the brain responsible for decision making and impulse control," "Directed attention is the ability to inhibit distractions and sustain attention and to shift attention appropriately, "It requires higher-order skills like planning and prioritizing." Kids generally have difficulty using directed attention because the prefrontal cortex doesn't fully develop until age 25. TikTok's constantly changing environments don't require that level of sustained attention. "If kids' brains become accustomed to constant changes, the brain finds it difficult to adapt to a nondigital activity where things don't move quite as fast," Tiktok and the like leads to "a cultural indoctrination" that encourages them to "grow used to and even prefer these kinds of highly stimulating fast scene shifts." As a result, it's getting harder for them to pay attention to things that don't offer instant gratification. "There are so many forces banding together that are just reinforcing people, especially young people, to have short attention spans,"