Mindlessly playing videos. Is it affecting my brain health?

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Even when the background sounds were YouTube or TikTok videos, studies have even found out that the brain's health is at a risk. It is very simple: it takes away that so-called "idle time," in which the brain rests perfectly without being occupied with any activity at all.

Nicole Murillo, 39, a cybersecurity specialist, would normally play jazz music just before making dinner or at any other idle style during the breaks at work. This is the time when most of her new ideas came up.

However, these sparks of creativity started dying just after she had begun to use the autoplay feature of TikTok. And all the while, she was just experiencing the joy and fulfillment of being able to do multitasking while viewing consecutive TikTok videos at the same time.

People are used to the practice of YouTube or TikTok videos continuing to play in the background. The background music to life, something that was once the dominion of some consistent noise, has been replaced by myriads of videos. Americans streamed an aggregate of 21 million years' worth of video content in just the previous year, according to Nielsen—a whooping increase of 21% from the previous year.

On the one hand, the background feature saves the user from boredom, which could appear in moments when he or she is doing something monotonous, and also speeds up the performance of tasks. However, a constant stream of videos may overly stimulate the brain and result in fatigue, which neuroscientists and psychiatrists warn could impair human creativity and productivity.

On the other hand, as The Wall Street Journal reports, unlike with music, the video content is literally crammed with information—language and visual images—everything demanding colossal mental processing power.

Dr. Anna Remke, a psychiatrist and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, put it, "When we continually stimulate ourselves with digital media, we demand from our brain a reactive mode.

Neuroscientists warn that multitasking or switching between the various video applications might reduce the ability to process and store information, hence reducing the span of attention.

This will mean further that even the ability to generate new ideas is possible through imagination. It is said that the attention to videos awakens the parts of the brain to refresh and invigorate humans only when they work alone. Though it fills the silent moments in between with video sounds and images, the effect is stifled.

Another issue is the high likelihood of getting addicted once YouTube or TikTok videos start playing.