new delhi, Oct. 1 -- Scroll through any social media feed today, and you are bound to see it: the screen sliced in two, with parallel videos running side by side. On one side, there's a creator who tells a story and on the other, a video of someone playing a mobile game or cooking a meal runs silently. This is the split-screen trend born from the battle for our distracted attention. Sometimes this short-format video stems from collaboration between creators, while in other cases it is used to bypass copyright restrictions. Psychologists say the trend is a symptom of our modern digital diet. "Attention spans have sharply declined and continue to shrink as content consumption becomes increasingly rapid and fragmented," said Ishita Pateria, a counselling psychologist. "While audiences once preferred long-form videos, today even bite-sized clips under 60 seconds struggle to hold ' interest. The sheer abundance of content on social media leaves users perpetually scrolling, constantly presented with new options and distractions." Pateria likens the flood of digital content to giving a child too many toys, diminishing engagement with any of them. "Split-screen videos exploit this phenomenon by introducing a secondary video specifically to distract and stimulate viewers, helping keep them hooked and preventing them from scrolling while the primary content is delivered," she adds. "With two videos competing for attention than just one, split screens effectively anchor viewers." Creators who use the split-screen template for collaboration find it helpful from a creative perspective. For creators, this dual-sided world presents opportunities and dangers. Tejas Manish Shetye, a creator with 262,000 followers as @teekhabanao, uses the feature for creative storytelling. He often collaborates with his father to present contrasting perspectives on parent-child relationships. "It helps add depth and context to a narrative in some instances, while in others it gives original creators where credit is due if other creators add to it or copy it," he said, noting that platforms provide built-in tools like remixing to encourage such partnerships. The darker side of the trend emerges when creators' work is reposted without permission. "On one hand, these videos are designed to retain audience attention for over 15 seconds-an important metric that encourages the algorithm to push them further," said Yashvi Bagga, who has over 1.5 million followers on her Instagram account @yashvayayay. "This not only boosts discoverability but also benefits multiple creators at once." "Legally speaking, adding split-screen or background footage doesn't shield reposted videos from copyright claims, as the underlying work is still protected. Using it without a licence or fair use or fair dealing justification would constitute infringement," specified Nakul Gandhi, the founder of NG Law Chambers. He explained that what these accounts rely on is more practical than legal: by overlaying another clip, the platform's automated copyright detection tools sometimes fail to flag the reused content, so the video avoids detection....