The Impact of Short-Form Digital Content on Social Awareness Among Nursing Students in a Private College

Abstract

Short-form digital content has become an increasingly prominent mode of communication and information sharing among college students, particularly through platforms such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. This study examined whether exposure to short-form digital content was associated with changes in social awareness among nursing students. Using a quantitative pretest-posttest experimental approach, the study involved 30 second-year nursing students assigned to either an experimental group or a control group. The experimental group viewed short-form videos related to social issues, whereas the control group viewed neutral content over a five-day intervention period. Social awareness was measured through an online questionnaire administered before and after the intervention. The available descriptive findings indicated a modest increase in pooled social-awareness scores from pretest to posttest, accompanied by slightly lower variability at posttest. However, the reported inferential output did not directly test whether change over time differed between the experimental and control groups. Accordingly, the findings are interpreted as preliminary rather than as definitive evidence of a causal intervention effect. The study suggests that carefully selected short-form digital media may have potential as a supplementary resource for social-awareness learning, while also underscoring the need for group-specific analysis, documented measurement quality, and critical digital-media literacy.