Who doesn’t love scrolling through their Facebook timeline and seeing video recipes such as cheeseburger cups, garlic shrimp dip and feta turkey burgers. Personally, I love a good Tasty video-watching study break. Although we all love watching these shortened, satisfying videos, do we actually take the time to try out any of the recipes we share or is it all just for visual and sharing satisfaction? Sharing satisfaction? Interesting concept. Anyway, one night I decided to put some recipes to the test.

My lovely boyfriend and I made sweet potato veggie fries and a lemon butter chicken pasta. The process turned into a very fun and yummy date night.

In total, the two recipes took about 45 minutes to make.

1. Sweet Potato Veggie Fries: I stuck to the exact recipe shown in the video. A tip for slicing the sweet potato: watch the video for the easiest/correct way to slice the fries and make sure you have a sharp knife. The Greek yogurt sauce offers a healthier alternative to a ranch dressing or a sour cream dip. The veggie fries were extremely easy to make. Found my after-school snack!

2. Lemon Butter Chicken Pasta: I did not follow the exact recipe; I forgot to buy red pepper flakes, however it was just as good without! The dish serves about 4 people and took me around 30 minutes in total to make. Overall it was a very easy recipe and the lemon adds a ton of flavor.

I recently read an article that talked about these videos as if they were part of a diabolical plot by food companies to get millennials and Gen Z's addicted to their products. Are they? Perhaps…Likely…Probably. But WHO CARES! They are AWESOME! They are awesome to watch and easy to make. The article explained how the video phenomenon originally began. The Tasty business was originally created in The Food Network headquarters in Manhattan. Amazingly, during the first 9 months of 2016 Tasty, Food Network’s Scripps’ digital business revenue was up $106 million. That’s a lot of dough—haha! A major part of the Tasty video success was from hiring millennials fresh out of college. They new these millennial employees would help them better understand what young people enjoy and engage on their social media feed. They would also know which specific social media platforms to target.

Not only are they fun and delicious, they are a great example of the kind of marketing that works for young people my age. If you believe the research, we have an attention span that is less than that of a goldfish (8 seconds-you, 9 - goldfish), so if you want to get our attention, you need to be quick, engaging, and even entertaining.