The sacrifice of alerting in active short video users: Evidence from executive control and default mode network functional connectivity

Abstract

Human attention is a limited resource increasingly taxed by continuous, socially embedded media streams, but how habitual short-video use shapes core attentional operations and their neural substrates remains unclear. Here we distinguish active from passive short video usage and examine whether they differentially relate to the alerting, orienting, and executive components of attention and to large-scale resting-state network connectivity. Our results demonstrate that frequent active short video usage predicts reduced alerting efficiency and the functional connectivity between right ventral prefrontal cortex (PFCv) and right posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) mediates this association, attenuating the direct effect and implicating interactions between default mode network (DMN) and control network. While orienting exhibits a modest interaction among different usages in which higher passive usage confers greater orienting only among low-active users, and executive control shows no reliable association. These findings extend resource-control accounts of attention to the short-video context by identifying a specific, right-lateralized coupling between brain networks that links active usage to diminished alerting. Mechanistically, we identify a right-lateralized default-control coupling that mediates the link between active short video usage and reduced alerting, isolating a modifiable resting-state pathway. These results provide actionable metrics for intervention and platform design to mitigate attentional costs in high-exposure users, informing evidence-based guidance for education and policy.