Digital dread

Social media platforms like TikTok have become central to how contemporary cultures express fear and anxiety, making them vital sites for studying how digital dread takes shape. This study examines how horror narratives and surveillance themes operate within TikTok’s compressed temporal format and algorithmic attention economy. Through quantitative content analysis of 19,382 TikTok videos, we investigate the prevalence, engagement patterns, and aesthetic characteristics of horror- and surveillance-themed content on the platform. Our findings reveal that horror-themed content, while constituting only 1.01% of videos, generates disproportionately higher engagement across all metrics compared to platform averages, with 7.9% more likes and 13.5% more comments. The brevity of TikTok videos (average 32.42 seconds) creates a distinctive “compressed horror aesthetic” that differs significantly from traditional horror media, relying on immediate affective triggers rather than sustained narrative development. We analyze these dynamics through Affective Disposition Theory (ADT), which explains how audience emotional alignment with characters and scenarios shapes enjoyment and engagement, even in short-form narratives. Using surveillance-themed content as a comparative baseline, we show how different forms of digital anxiety manifest through distinct engagement mechanisms. This research contributes to our understanding of how platform affordances influence genre-specific content creation and consumption, with implications for media literacy, platform governance, and digital wellbeing in ecosystems increasingly dominated by short-form video content

Anxiety · Digital economy · Narrative · Child Development and Digital Technology · Digital Media and Philosophy · Impact of Technology on Adolescents

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