How many movies have you watched this year? I bet it isn’t enough.

WATCH. A student watches a movie on her phone. Watching movies on phones is a preferable alternative to watching short form content. Photo courtesy of Owen Meade.

Since movies were first created, way back at the start of the 20th century, people have been able to watch them. At no point in the history of movies have people ever had the problem of not being able to sit down for 90 minutes and enjoy a film. In fact, it was a privilege to see a movie, something sought after and special. Now, at a time when movies are readily available in nearly everyone's pocket, we suddenly can't sit through them? This is a bigger problem than you might think.

Youth right now are struggling to sit through movies, and maybe even avoiding them in the first place. Ask yourself how many movies you've watched this year. According to Family Movie Night, for the average American that number is 50. If you're Gen Z that number is probably a lot less, and yet, according to Bradley University, the average Gen Z spends well over six hours a day on their phone. That's enough time to watch three movies. So why aren't we?

Gen Z watches a lot of short form content, and short form content creates a feedback loop. The more shorts you watch, the shorter your attention span gets, and the shorter your attention span gets, the less you watch long form content. The less you watch long form content, the more you watch shorts, and so on and so forth.

This has serious implications. If we can't expect kids to sit through a two hour movie, how could we possibly expect them to sit through an eight hour workday? How can we possibly expect them to do their work with integrity instead of rushing through to go scroll. How could we possibly expect them to be the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, to spend every available hour of every month of every year to build something that truly changes the world, if they can't sit through a two hour movie? If Gen Z can't do those things, and that doesn't scare you, I really don't know what will.

Watching movies has a plethora of benefits as well. For one, movies are more often than not a social experience. Movies are best enjoyed in the company of others. A good film makes you feel something, be it sadness, joy, fear, or anywhere in between. When we feel those things together, as a family or as friends, or even just as people sitting next to each other in a theater, it's a feeling you just don't get from shorts. It's something really unique, and irreplaceable.

Emotions in movies go a lot deeper. There is a very stark contrast between what films make you feel and what shorts make you feel. When you scroll short form content, each clip makes you feel something. They are capable of inducing an emotion, but they aren't coordinated from one clip to the next. Each short makes you feel a different emotion. In just one minute, you could feel happy, sad, scared, angry, and guilty, without a second to adjust. That isn't healthy. A recent study published in September of 2025, done by researchers at Coventry University looked at the effects of short form content on emotional stability. Random firing of emotions is a strain on your mind, so your brain adapts its chemistry to accommodate. When you stop scrolling, you don't instantly de-adapt, so your emotions remain volatile and over powered. This makes you very prone to mood swings.

In contrast, movies make you feel things in a specific way. The creator of that movie wanted to make you feel something. They meticulously crafted the film to walk you down the path that the characters are walking. That path is thought out, human, often relatable, and in a good film, beautiful.

This is, in essence, the same as all art. Just as a painter aims to make you feel something when you look at their painting, or as a musician strives to incite an emotion with their song, a film maker works to create a feeling with their film.

"People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don’t have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning." – Steven Spielberg

It's impossible to tell a story like Rainman or Hidden Figures in a TikTok. Stories like that deserve to be told in a movie. Nothing else is so intense, so immersive, so captivating, that just for a few hours, you can feel like you were really there. Film can tell stories better for a lot of reasons. It's longer, so it can convey a more complex story arc. Movies are more detailed, and those details carry meaning. It's like taking a photo at higher resolution. It holds more information, so the picture of the story is crisper and easier to see.

The next time you watch a movie try to get lost in the story. Try to imagine you're really there. Try to let the movie pick you up and place you in a whole new world, because if you can, just for an hour, you can be whenever, wherever, whoever you want. That is the magic of movies.