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Honestly itâs annoying as fuck. Nobody asked for YouTube to become TikTok. In fact, I feel like weâd need to go in the opposite directionâŚ
Itâs sadly a fact that attention spans have gotten worse over the years. When itâs too much effort for people to watch a ten minute video or read more than a paragraph of text, weâre in serious trouble.
Iâm doing my part by rewarding creators who put out actual quality content in longer videos. But I fear theyâve got a difficult time ahead if this trend continues.
Itâs sadly a fact that attention spans have gotten worse over the years. When itâs too much effort for people to watch a ten minute video or read more than a paragraph of text, weâre in serious trouble.
Interesting to note that this isn't necessarily a fact, as at the very least there hasn't been any research to support this widely held notion.
Busting the Attention Span Myth offers a higher level overview concerning the subject.
There's also this video that covers some of that article but also digs through other sources, listed in the description.
There certainly have been studies on it, like this one:
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/490177
But youâre right in that more empirical evidence would be nice. Right now, everyone âknowsâ that attention spans are worse. We can feel it in ourselves, and we see it in others, according to surveys.
But itâs hard to quantify how much or the exact reasons. Even research like the one above points out that itâs not just social media. Itâs basically everything, all at once, which makes it hard to focus.
More evidence would certainly be good. Either we discover that itâs nothing to worry about or we discover that itâs a thing we should definitely attempt to fix before it gets worse.
Ah, thanks for the link! It's definitely a bummer that there isn't more research, especially regarding individuals (as your linked research notes, its focus was on collective attention), and what little research there is is more to do with marketing than science.