Preventing toxic short videos from surrounding users

One video and then another video

Quynh Anh, 26 years old, an office worker in Hanoi, once thought watching a few short videos before bed was just a way to entertain herself after a stressful working day. But many evenings, from a film about the "general director" teaching employees, she continued to be drawn into videos of mother-in-law - daughter-in-law, adultery, revenge and a series of other dramatic details.

Knowing that there are too many details, but every time I watch this video, I automatically switch to another video, I almost can't get out, when I'm tired, it's already past midnight," Quynh Anh recounted.

It is worth mentioning that she did not actively search for all those contents. Just stopping longer at a few videos, the news board quickly appeared with more and more similar content.

Quynh Anh's story is not unique. Ngoc Thao, 20 years old, a student in Hanoi, admitted to using her phone for up to 18 hours a day. She often watches video clips. Initially, she only intended to watch for a few minutes instead of spending hours on a movie, but then from one set to another, some days Thao stayed up all night to find all the next parts. Many times she deleted TikTok and Facebook with the intention of "quitting", but only a few hours later she downloaded it again.

Mai Tuan An, 25 years old, also has a habit of turning on short videos when eating, before sleeping, even in very short periods of time during the day. Some nights he holds his phone with the thought of watching it to get tired eyes to fall asleep easily, but the more he watches, the more awake he becomes. The next day, his body is tired, his spirit is sluggish, and his work is affected.

Those stories show a paradox of short videos: Each video is only a few tens of seconds or minutes long, creating a feeling of almost no time wasted, but dozens, hundreds of consecutive videos can take away many hours.

According to Digital 2026 Vietnam Report, by the end of 2025, Vietnam has about 79 million social network users. On average, an Internet user spends about 7 hours and 8 minutes per week watching short videos; 93.9% of Internet users access this type of content.

Harms and control mechanisms

Answering Lao Dong Newspaper about the consequences of toxic short videos, BS. Specialist II Tran Minh Khuyen - Specialist in Neuropsychiatry - Psychology at the Clinic of University Medical Center 1, analyzed that the human brain has neurotransmitters related to feelings of happiness such as dopamine, serotonin... This is a normal biological mechanism.

However, social networking platforms with short content optimization algorithms have strongly exploited this mechanism. Short videos of about 30 seconds to 1 minute, concise and rushable titles cause the brain to continuously experience dopamine spikes, creating instant pleasure. When this phenomenon is repeated many times, users are easily drawn into continuous viewing and find it difficult to stop, similar to the mechanism for forming addictive behavior.

According to Dr. Tran Minh Khuyen, a common manifestation in some social media addicts is that when they do not watch short, tense videos... dopamine is not stimulated, they may feel restless and uncomfortable; but when they watch it again, they feel more comfortable.

This expert emphasized that getting used to short, fast, and intense content over time can reduce concentration and patience. Previously, a person could read dozens of pages of books, but when they are used to very short videos, they find it difficult to maintain attention for a long time. The greater risk is that when users are long-term surrounded by negative content, their view of the real world is easily distorted.

In addition, shocking and controversial content often strongly stimulates the brain's reward system, making users easily rush into comments and attacks without verification. When the ability to evaluate decreases, social network users are very likely to fall into a state of information chaos.

The question here is whether short videos can be "banned"? As Assoc. Prof. Dr. Bui Hoai Son mentioned above, "The problem lies in the dosage, quality of content and user autonomy.

The first responsibility, platforms must have the obligation to identify and limit the distribution of groups of content that are clearly potentially harmful such as violence, inciting dangerous behavior, extreme superstition, inappropriate sex content, bullying, insulting the honor of others or videos intentionally creating misleading situations for interaction.

If an account continuously produces content with the same toxic formula, the platform needs to reduce the ability to propose, limit making money, temporarily suspend or lock the account depending on the severity. If there are no strong enough sanctions, the economic problem will continue to encourage content producers to "be as shocked as possible, the more arguments, the more views".

In addition, the platform can display warnings about usage time, stop automatically broadcasting or proactively diversify proposed content instead of continuing to push users deeper into a negative topic.

For children and adolescents, the mechanism must be stricter. This is a group that is easily affected by short, fast, intense content and limited self-control ability. A child account mode can be applied with a stricter content filter, limiting usage time, turning off continuous automatic playback and limiting topics that are not suitable for the age group.

A control mechanism is needed to clearly define the responsibilities of video producers. As content production can be automated more and more easily, the volume of "junk" videos is at risk of increasing much faster than manual censorship.

The platform needs to publicize community criteria, apply a clear warning mechanism and have a history of violations for each account. Accounts that violate many times should not continue to benefit from advertising or revenue sharing programs.

The control mechanism needs to simultaneously impact 3 links: Content producers, distribution algorithms and users.

It is impossible to put all responsibility on a young person holding a phone and require them to be alert enough to a system designed to keep them as long as possible. A healthy digital space needs to ensure that good, valuable content has the opportunity to spread, while harmful products must be filtered from technological tools and the user's own awareness.