Trend culture today is a sharp lens through which to see how algorithms are reshaping our cultural tastes. The average user spends about 1 hour and 16 minutes per day watching short videos on various platforms, while adults in the US spend about 58 hours per month on TikTok alone (Firework, 2025).These numbers mean that a significant portion of our "cultural consumption" time goes through algorithms designed to maximize engagement and how long we stay on the platform, not the depth or quality of the cultural experience.The question becomes:Is the lifespan of an artistic or intellectual work now measured more by the number of days it remains "trending" than by its ability to be remembered for decades? Studies on the lifespan of posts indicate that 75% of impressions of a Facebook post are realized within the first two and a half hours, and that most interaction on most platforms occurs within the first 24 to48 hours (Green Umbrella, 2019; NeoReach, 2021), which means that the attention window is very short, and the platform's logic rewards what works in this window rather than what works over a longer period of time.
According to a joint report by TikTok and Luminate, 84% of the songs that entered the Billboard Global 200 in 2024 had first gone viral on TikTok. Another report showed that more than 175 songs trending on TikTok entered the Billboard Hot 100 in just one year, double the number from the previous year.This correlation has led critics to point out that labels are encouraging artists to make "trend-friendly" music rather than full albums or long-form artistic experiences (The Guardian, 2024). If we add to this the fact that the average quality viewing time on TikTok is only 15-20 seconds (Planable, 2025), it makes sense that a song, a scene, and even an idea is reshaped to fit those few seconds, rather than for careful listening or deep reading.
Algorithms reward short, high-impact content, while complex intellectual and literary works require time, reflection, and concentration, which are scarce in an environment where 61% of respondents prefer short videos to long-form articles, podcasts, or videos (Media.The issue is not that deep work cannot survive, but that the economic and cultural incentives clearly favor the quick and light, pushing producers and publishers to sideline long-form projects that require years of work in favor of works that can "burn out" in a few days of trending.
The final question remains: do we determine the trend, or are algorithms the real culprits? On the surface, the trend is based on our clicks, shares, and choices, but research on algorithmically ordered digital environments suggests that what we see is essentially the result of opaque ordering designed to maximize engagement, and may have the effect of narrowing content diversity and feeding biases (Kelm, 2023; Ludwig, 2023).A report by Ofcom in 2025 found that those who got their news primarily through social media were less able to accurately answer questions about news facts than those who used more diverse news sources (Ofcom, 2025), suggesting that algorithms not only select what we see, but also influence the kind of knowledge we carry about the world.With short-form video consumption on the rise - 1.6 billion people use this format, about 20% of the world's population (Yaguara, 2025) - it is clear that trend culture is not just a reflection of public taste, but the product of an unequal interplay between user preferences and algorithm design that redefines what we consider "successful" or "important" in the cultural sphere.
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