Why do people spend so much time on short-form videos?
Because they are the perfect Skinner box. Each swipe is a tiny gamble — maybe you get a laugh, maybe you learn something, maybe you get cringe — and your brain can't resist checking the next one. It's low effort to watch and zero effort to skip, so there's no stopping cue like the end of a TV episode. You don't decide to spend an hour, you just decide 120 times in a row to not stop yet.