Scrolling is not free: The hidden cost of Shorts
Résumé
Short videos have become one of the most popular forms of content consumption on mobile devices. Unlike traditional video streaming, users often watch many short videos within a single session and frequently swipe away videos after only a brief viewing period. This interaction pattern can lead to significant data waste, where video content is downloaded but never viewed. In this paper, we systematically investigate data waste in short video streaming and propose an experimental methodology to quantify its magnitude and underlying causes. Using YouTube Shorts as a case study, we design multiple controlled viewing scenarios to measure the fraction of downloaded video data that is not watched. We further analyze how video properties, content categories, and the platform's buffering and prefetching strategies contribute to this waste. Our results reveal substantial inefficiencies in short video delivery, highlighting opportunities for improving data efficiency in short-form video streaming systems.
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