Double the fun? Split-screen videos rewriting content consumption

Scroll through any social media feed today, and you are bound to see it: the screen sliced in two, with parallel videos running side by side.

- Pratishtha Bagai

On one side, there's a creator who tells a story, and on the other, a video of someone playing a mobile game or cooking a meal runs silently. This is the split-screen trend born from the battle for our distracted attention.

Sometimes this short-format video stems from collaboration between creators, while in other cases it is used to bypass copyright restrictions.

Psychologists say the trend is a direct symptom of our modern digital diet. "Attention spans have sharply declined and continue to shrink as content consumption becomes increasingly rapid and fragmented," said Ishita Pateria, a counselling psychologist.