So, perhaps 'essentially cause ADHD' is a bit strong, but there are absolutely studies that show that exposure to / addiction to short form video content impair focus, cause/exacerbate attention deficits, cause/exacerbate difficulty maintaining attention, as well as impair the ability to study and perform academically, worsen overall mental health etc.

Oh, and short form video content is also found to be addictive as well.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0144929X.2022.2151512

https://www.cell.com/heliyon/fulltext/S2405-8440(24)06377-1

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9127725/

In summary, brain rot.

Theres also studies which show, hilariously, that a good amount of mental health 'advice' on such short form content platforms is garbage.

This one studies the top posts on ADHD and finds half of them to be misleading.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/07067437221082854

And to round it out, heres a study on negative body image perception and self objectification amongst girls/women by short form content:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1740144523000876?via%3Dihub

In fairness, this study does find that negative self perception and self objectification increase with viewing either short or long form video content or images featuring 'ideal' women, which makes sense, as this sort of thing has been long studied before 'social media' even existed (TV, Magazines, Movies, etc).

So, while objectification and body image problems from media exposure are not new, the proliferation and exposure amount are increased dramatically in the age of widespread social media.

I would be willing to bet that had a similar study as this one been done on boys/men it would show similar results.