Reel Minds, Hollow Souls: How Short Videos Are Unmaking Young India – himalayan policy and research foundation

Peerzada Muneer

In the glow of a small screen, a new kind of reality is being edited, filtered and looped on endless autoplay. For millions of young Indians, life today is not just lived but staged, cut into 15–30 second bursts and served to an invisible audience. Short-form videos, “reels” on Instagram, YouTube Shorts, Facebook Reels and their Indian cousins, have quietly moved from being a passing trend to becoming the default language of youth culture, a grammar through which humour, beauty, success, romance, even revolt, are now expressed. This “reel culture” is not just about technology or entertainment; it is reshaping how a generation thinks, feels and sees itself, in ways far deeper than a swipe of the finger suggests.

Reel culture can be understood as a way of living where short videos are not only consumed, but also used to measure worth, build identity and decide what is “real”. It is the culture of scrolling through infinite streams of user-generated clips, often less than a minute long, designed to grab attention within the first few seconds with sound, colour, and movement. Platforms treat every reel as a micro-experiment in attraction: which pose, which angle, which joke keeps the eye from drifting away. Over time, these tiny experiments evolve into a shared code: certain dances, transitions, filters, body types and lifestyles repeat so often that they become the unofficial rules of being “cool” online. Algorithms silently reward those who obey these rules with more views and visibility, and punish those who don’t with digital invisibility.

The rise of this culture has been surprisingly swift in India. TikTok first introduced the mass appeal of short videos to young Indians in small towns and big cities alike, until its ban left a vacuum that was quickly occupied by home-grown apps and global giants. Affordable smartphones, cheap data and the integration of short videos inside familiar social networks turned reels into a daily habit rather than a separate hobby. Studies on social media use show that a vast majority of internet users now consume short videos at least once a day, and many young users check them multiple times, filling every micro-gap of boredom, bus rides, lunch breaks, silent evenings, with bursts of content. What began as a playful experiment has matured into the main stage of India’s digital attention.

Reels have quietly replaced several older forms of engagement. Long-status updates, thoughtful blogs, and even casual conversations are competing with what can be compressed into a few seconds of spectacle. Brands now tailor messages for vertical video, artists release “reel-friendly” hooks of songs, and even universities and news outlets package information into micro-videos to keep up with shrinking attention spans. In many urban circles, friendships and even romantic choices are filtered through how someone appears on camera, what they post, or whether they can recreate viral trends. The reel, originally an add-on to life, has begun to dictate haircuts, holiday plans, restaurant choices and even acts of charity, which are sometimes undertaken less for their intrinsic value and more for how they will look on screen.

Beneath this technological shift lies a deeper psychological transformation. Several recent studies on short video addiction highlight how design features such as endless scroll, variable rewards (the unpredictable rush of a particularly funny or shocking clip), and personalized algorithmic feeds change emotional habits over time. Such platforms offer instant emotional gratification: a miniature dose of joy, curiosity or outrage on demand. When these quick highs become the brain’s preferred food, slower, quieter emotions—like patience, contemplation, and long-term satisfaction—begin to feel dull and unnecessary. Young people who spend hours on such platforms report reduced concentration, sleep disturbances, and a fragmented style of attention that jumps quickly between stimuli but struggles to hold focus on complex tasks.

This environment also reshapes how many young Indians see themselves. Validation is quantified and stacked in public: views, likes, comments and followers form a visible scoreboard of social worth. Comparison becomes a constant background noise, someone always looks better, earns more, travels farther, dances smoother. Research has shown links between online overuse, loneliness and problematic dependence on short videos, where individuals seek refuge in the same platforms that deepen their sense of inadequacy. Instead of building a stable sense of self grounded in real relationships and capabilities, many begin to assemble a fragile identity from curated moments and borrowed aesthetics, always anxious about the next drop in engagement.

In such a space, psychological traits like impatience and intolerance find fertile soil. When content is consumed in seconds, anything that takes time to understand or is slightly uncomfortable becomes easy to swipe away. Arguments, religious teachings, political ideas, even moral questions are often reduced to simplified reels that reward certainty and drama over nuance. The brain becomes accustomed to rapid emotional spikes, laughter, shock, outrage, and begins to seek them even in offline life. Teenagers and young adults already wired for novelty and reward are especially vulnerable; research on youth and digital media suggests higher levels of impulsivity and emotional volatility when gratification is always just a swipe away. In such a climate, the patience needed for listening, the tolerance needed for disagreement, and the steadiness needed for deep relationships can appear strangely outdated.

The fanaticism that emerges from this culture does not always wear the face of traditional ideology. It can be a fanaticism of trends and personalities, a fierce loyalty to influencers, aesthetic styles, or micro-communities built around specific interests. Short-form platforms encourage niche tribes, each with their own language, heroes and enemies. Algorithms amplify whatever holds attention longest, which often means content that triggers strong emotions—especially anger, superiority or fear. Over time, this can breed a generation more comfortable with extreme reactions than with careful thought, more interested in “owning” opponents than understanding them, and quick to dehumanise those outside their chosen tribe.

Philosophically, reel culture raises troubling questions about what it means to be human in a time when visibility seems more important than reality. Human beings have always told stories, but these stories once demanded memory, time and a shared physical space. Today’s stories come pre-edited with music, filters and jump cuts, and live inside a commercial infrastructure optimised not for truth or wisdom, but for engagement and profit. When self-expression is constantly measured against performance metrics, authenticity becomes a pose among other poses. This threatens one of the most basic philosophical notions of personhood: that the self has a depth which cannot be fully captured from the outside.

The process of “de-digitisation” of life, bringing experiences back from screens into raw reality, is becoming harder precisely because reel culture digitises not just moments but meanings. A meal is incomplete without a clip, a festival seems wasted if not posted, an act of kindness feels more “real” once approved by strangers online. In such a world, individuals risk becoming characters styled for consumption rather than persons with inner lives. Philosophers have long warned of reification, the transformation of living beings into things; now, with each new filter that smooths the face, each trend that demands conformity, another layer of the human particular is sanded away.

Reel culture also erodes the sense of continuity that philosophical reflection needs. Serious questions about the good life, justice, suffering or death cannot be settled in the time it takes to watch a dance transition. Yet platforms encourage exactly that: quick, confident statements about everything, delivered with charisma and background music. Ethical dilemmas get framed as simplistic choices, spiritual experiences as aesthetic backdrops, and complex political or social realities as emotionally charged snippets. Even when the content is about philosophy or spirituality, the format tends to favour catchy quotes over difficult arguments, inspirational slogans over honest wrestling with doubt.

Nowhere is the vulnerability more evident than in the realm of religiosity, ethics and spirituality. On the surface, reels are full of devotional songs, quotes from scriptures, and clips of rituals, prayers and preachers. Spiritual content is widely shared, often going viral, and it might appear that religiosity is thriving. Yet there is a subtle shift at work: the sacred is increasingly packaged as content, subject to the same logic of trend, virality and branding as any product. When a profound teaching is compressed into a few seconds wrapped in dramatic music, the focus can move from inner transformation to external performance, how “spiritual” one appears rather than how one actually lives.

Ethically, the chase for attention can encourage behaviour that contradicts the very values that religious or moral traditions seek to uphold. Harmful pranks, intrusive filming of strangers, insensitive use of tragedy or poverty as aesthetic backdrop, and casual cruelty disguised as humour become easier to justify when the primary measure is engagement. The discipline required by any serious ethical life, honesty, restraint, responsibility, sits uneasily with a culture where the loudest and most provocative voices are often rewarded most lavishly. Spirituality, which demands silence, reflection and humility, risks becoming just another costume worn briefly for the camera.

For coming generations, the danger is not that reels exist, but that they become the only language through which reality is encountered. Children growing up in homes where every moment is potentially recordable may internalise the idea that they are always being watched, always on stage. This can distort conscience itself: actions might be judged less by whether they are right or wrong, and more by how they will look if captured and shared. The space for mistakes, privacy and genuine repentance shrinks under the glare of a perpetual spotlight. Philosophical traditions that emphasise the interior life—the examined life, the quiet conscience, the inner voice—face an environment where interiority is constantly interrupted.

Yet the story is not predetermined. The same tools that distract can be used to educate, inspire and connect across divides, but doing so requires a deliberate, almost counter-cultural stance. It calls for young Indians to treat reels as tools, not as mirrors, and to reclaim parts of their lives from the algorithm’s grip: unrecorded conversations, offline friendships, long-form reading, sustained artistic or intellectual work. It demands that religious communities, teachers and elders engage with this culture honestly, acknowledging its pull while offering practices that rebuild attention, patience and empathy. If such efforts are neglected, reel culture will not just shape the tastes of young India; it will shape its soul, quietly redrawing the boundaries of what it means to be human in the first.

Reference Links:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590291125010435

Leave a Reply Cancel reply