The Relationship between Short Video Flow, Addiction, Serendipity, and Achievement Motivation among Chinese Vocational School Students: The Post-Epidemic Era Context

Abstract

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, people have been spending more time in the online world because of restrictions on face-to-face communication due to epidemic prevention controls. This has also brought the issue of Internet addiction, including the overuse and negative effects of short videos, to the forefront of attention. Past research has found that Internet addiction has a negative impact on well-being. However, there is a special concept of positive emotion called “serendipity” (小确幸). Serendipity provides a small, fleeting but positive experience, yet it is often associated with negative perceptions from an outside perspective. However, the relationship between short video addiction and serendipity is not yet known. Based on this, a theoretical model was developed in the context of the I-PACE model. To understand the relationship between short video addiction and serendipity among college students, in this study, we conducted snowball sampling and distributed online questionnaires using the Wenjuanxing platform. The target population of the questionnaire distribution was vocational college students in China, of whom 985 valid study participants responded, yielding a valid return rate of 82.1%. Of the respondents, 410 (41.6%) were male and 575 (58.4%) were female. The results were as follows: a. short video flow had a positive relationship with serendipity, a negative relationship with achievement motivation, and a positive effect on short video addiction; b. short video addiction had a positive effect on serendipity and a negative effect on achievement motivation; and c. serendipity had a negative impact on achievement motivation. This shows that short video addiction, like other Internet addictions, can have a negative impact on students’ learning.

Psychometric Properties of Turkish Versions of the Short Video Flow Scale and Short Video Addiction Scale

“…Another study showed that both short video flow and short video addiction had significant negative relationships with achievement motivation in vocational school students (12). Moreover, it is known that short video addiction has positive significant relationships with learning avoidance motivation and negative significant relationships with learning commitment in vocational school students (45).…”

“…The energetic, surprising, and entertaining content of short videos can cause individuals to experience the flow very much. Short video flow is described as the state of high enjoyment and immersion one gets while watching a video (12). It has been suggested that flow experiences are also associated with various behavioral addictions (13,14).…”

“…The transformation of watching short videos into addiction in individuals primarily negatively affects academic learning environments. It is known that students' learning motivation, achievement motivation and learning well-being have negative significant correlations with short video flow experience and short video addiction (12,20). In addition, problematic use of short videos negatively affects the behavioral engagement required for academic success (21).…”

“…For this reason, short video flow and addiction scales differ from other video scales both because of their wider scope and the fact that they concern a more general mass of people. However, there are a few studies on short video flow and short video addiction in the literature (12,20,22,25). From this point of view, in this study, assessment tools related to watching of short videos were adapted especially for researchers in Turkey to conduct studies on short videos.…”

Predicting the Learning Avoidance Motivation, Learning Commitment, and Silent Classroom Behavior of Chinese Vocational College Students Caused by Short Video Addiction

“…This problematic usage is generally considered to be detrimental to users. Students in particular love short videos, but because of the immersive nature of the videos, many students can experience associated problems, and some even become addicted [ 2 , 3 , 4 ]. Therefore, Hong et al pointed out that video addiction behaviors have had a very large negative impact on the study and life of students of different school ages [ 5 ].…”