So a view I see a lot nowadays is that attention spans are getting shorter, especially when it comes to younger generations. And the growing success of short form content on Tiktok, Youtube and Twitter for example seems to support this claim. I have a friend in their early 20s who regularly checks their phone (sometimes scrolling Tiktok content) as we’re watching a film. And an older colleague recently was pleased to see me reading a book, because he felt that anyone my age and younger was less likely to want to invest the time in reading.
But is this actually true on the whole? Does social media like Tiktok really mould our interests and alter our attention? In some respects I can see how it could change our expectations. If we’ve come to expect a webpage to load in seconds, it can be frustrating when we have to wait minutes. But to someone that was raised with dial-up, perhaps that wouldn’t be as much of an issue. In the same way, if a piece of media doesn’t capture someone in the first few minutes they may be more inclined to lose focus because they’re so used to quick dopamine hits from short form content. Alternatively, maybe this whole argument is just a ‘kids these days’ fallacy. Obviously there are plenty of young adults that buck this trend.
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Point after point after point, this is it exactly. The supposed “lowering” attention span is just a natural response to the greater amount of options available in most aspects of modern life, and making the most efficient use of them.
People were already channel surfing their TV in the 90s with a remote flick every other minute, the current situation is just a natural evolution of that when we go from 100 available channels to literally every conceivable content past and present known to man at a press of a button. Extrapolate that to a similar degree of evolution in most aspects.
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Fully agree with this. People just have a lower tolerance for mediocre content. YouTube is a great example for that. Long form content is as popular as ever, it’s just the demand of quality has risen. A few years ago Let’s Plays still did very well. Today Let’s Plays are generally falling in viewership. But that’s because Let’s Plays are mediocre quality at best. Many content creators shifted away from Let’s Plays and provide different content. But the actual video length hasn’t changed.
Ppeople always found stuff to distract themselves with if a task is boring. As kids we would just play with pens, erasers, or anything else in our reach while studying. Today, kids just look on their smartphone instead. Re-reading the same passage over and over in boring book happens just as much today as it did 20 years ago. But today I am more likely to just not continue reading.
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I do agree with your points for the most part. But I wonder - do films need to be constantly grabbing our attention? Sometimes a bit of downtime can enhance the subsequent action.
And boredom isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It can push us to try new things and be creative, to consider our thoughts. If we have short form content available to fill every last second of our free time, it begins to feel like we have to fill those moments, otherwise we’re wasting our time.
I think delayed gratification is a good thing, regardless of whether the delay conveys any benefit. Constant reward feels less meaningful. But yes it’s a cost/benefit analysis - I wouldn’t watch three seasons of a show in order to get to the good bit.
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Boredom promotes creativity and deep thought.
I think the question is flawed and so are the responses. You all wrote far too much so I cba to read
As a teacher: Essays written in exam conditions have become shorter over time. The exam is not shorter in length. A successful art, history, or English HSC exam would be completed with 6, 8 or 12 pages or more in the 1990s, and now likely has half those pages. Still 1.5 or 2 hours or three hours long, as it was back in the 90s.
Maths? “Brain breaks” are in vogue. 20 years ago, a high level senior student (age 16-18) would be expected to do calculus for a two hour “double” lesson. Now if they work on calculus for half an hour, they expect to have a ten minute break and start work again. Does this make the student more productive? No, they complete less pages of the same textbook. Newer textbooks, correspondingly, have far less physical work in them than textbooks written 20 years ago.
The “non academic” track? There are less apprenticeships available, and students get rejected from the few that exist. 40 years ago the NSW trains had 200 apprenticeships a year. Now they have four a year. We have had apprentices sent back to us two weeks in with the (fail level) complaint “won’t put his phone away.” The teen is then put back in the academic track, as education opportunities are compulsory, and they learn nothing as the accusation is true.
Yes, with this evidence, you might be right about this lot.
Thanks for this perspective. I wonder if a lot of this isn’t so much an issue with attention span, but more a reluctance to put the work in?
That said, it does sound like it’s the environment itself that’s causing it. If the schools are encouraging ‘brain breaks’, I assume there’s good reason behind it? Does that improve learning/retention?
I suslect one of the reasons brain breaks are happening is that it’s nice to have a break as a teacher, too.If it does help retention, it isn’t noticeable, but it does help with your relationship with the students, so there’s that in its favour. I don’t mind about the brain breaks, but the drills and practice were a tried and true method for hundreds of years for a reason; They work, and lead to more output and focus long term. Self motivation is a great skill to have for any future endeavour, even if your job is not related to maths, or biology, or art, or whatever.
One of the activities students always do is “past papers”, completing the examination material from historical exams to practice for the real thing. Even the students have pointed out to me the difficulty of the papers has eased in the last twenty years, and the marking rubrics are more forgiving than they were.
Tl;dr
I’m very impatient and I don’t do that. I think people checking their phones when they are supposed to be watching something is a sign that whatever they’re watching doesn’t interest them as much.
The only reason I don’t switch to my phone is because if realise that’s the case, I’d rather do something else entirely instead- imo if it doesn’t grab my attention 100% then the time I dedicate to the rest of it feels wasted. But I know people who enjoy series that have a lot of filler and fluff, and they will be multitasking while watching.
I don’t know anything about it from a scientific ground but I know about myself. I am what ai consum. I’m also a big fan of boredom because it activates creativity. The more I leave my phone in my pocket when I’ve got nothing to do, the more creative I get. I believe that this also plays into having longer attention spans. But not completly sure how. Maybe somebody else has an idea?
Tldr? /s
Walls of text everywhere I’m scared
Lmao. Took me a while to understand this.
Sounds like you have short attention span.
That’s the joke, my friend.
No you
attn short?
I’d think it’s more that there’s now more media fighting your attention. When I was a kid (GenX here), we had a handful of TV channels and books. Books was what I went with.
Nowadays, I get home from work and watch something on YouTube before bed. I still read, but my standards have risen, and a trashy space opera won’t do it anymore for me. It has to be a great one now, and there are fewer of them. So, naturally, YouTube gets a bigger share of my time. Or games, when I have time to play on the weekends. My comfort game used to be Civilization, and currently I’m hooked on Baldurs Gate.
I can’t comment outside of personal experience, but I noticed my retention has gotten incredibly short. I have this little slab constantly calling for my attention and won’t let me focus on anything for a long period of time. Then, because of the convenience of storing everything electronically and having it in that same little slab, I have noticed that I can’t really remember much. However, as of late, I have taken up journaling and writing everything down with pen and paper, and this has allowed me to remember and focus better on things.
I have heard that because writing is slower than typing things, it gives more time for our brains to memorize them. Also, I have turned off all notifications and left all social networks, and I can feel more engaged in whatever is going on in my real life.
I can only speak for myself, and am not a teen, but I can tell you I used to be able to, but can no longer: hear a person’s phone number once and memorize it, remember 4-5 directional turns without writing it down, watch a 2 hour movie I’m not enthralled with, stare at traffic or people walking by and not be upset I’m wasting my time.
I think it’s more the access to knowledge and productivity that has changed our society’s concept of what needs to be remembered or what we should spend our thought on, than it is a generational neuro-difference.
For me the only thing that changed is that I now have options. As a teenager I could watch movies I had no interest in, or play some story heavy rpg game in Japanese or many other things I don’t do anymore, but back then the alternative was watching some ice cubes melt. Today I don’t do those things because I can do other stuff that appeal to me more.
@OmegaMouse Attention spans shorten, while stomach spans enlarge.
Try reading a book for 5 hours in the city surrounded by your devices, and try doing it in nature with no devices around you. We didn’t change, but our world did and we adapt with it. Of course, things wouldn’t be so bad if there weren’t people getting unimaginably rich by trapping your attention.
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If it has, it has only been a recent phenomenon. Hell, the need for a large portion of the population to concentrate for a long period of time is a recent development.
Attention spans are only really an issue where attention was economically valuable.
I don’t think this is so much about concentration. It is about tolerance of not being stimulated. It’s about how strongly people are driven to seek stimulation when they aren’t feeling sufficiently stimulated.
Mine did for sure. When I was younger I read hundresds of books. Nowadays I can’t do it any more. I have multiple blockbuster movies half watched, the playing time noted down to be able to resume. I can’t bear watching anime any more, because of their endless showdowns and flashbacks before the action. (I loved anime when I was younger.) I can’t watch any old (like pre 2000) shows any more (Star Trek TNG, Knight Rider, A-Team, Simpsons, etc), even ones I didn’t watch yet, or ones i really liked. Their pace is just too slow. Sometimes I even speed newer shows up to be able to watch them. Otherwise everything feels like a waste of time; like I’m misssing out on something else, something better, while doing it.
I still read much maybe a book a day,buz watching shows is really hard for me. Most anime episodes end up being 10minutes, because I skip(5sec intervals) so much. Flash back scenic views, pre showdown talk, powering up, ceinging, breaks
Maybe check out “chinese anime” (donghua), but well it’s chinese (in speech and ideology), which can complicate watching it for people like me, from different nationality. Good examples would be Fog Hill of Five Elements or Swallowed Star.
What are some good currently airing donghua?
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Otherwise everything feels like a waste of time; like I’m misssing out on something else, something better, while doing it.
This makes me think that the real issue isn’t that your attention span is small and you get bored or can’t pay attention, but that you can’t “slow down” and enjoy what you are doing that moment and instead you keep thinking “I could be doing this, or that”.
Seems to me like these are two different problems (mind you I’m not an expert or anything, just sharing an observation I made)
With “Otherwise” I mean, if i don’t speed those aforementioned things up or stop doing them.
There are things I actually enjoy, like some PC games, newer shows or watching “chinese anime” (donghua), which is usually very action packed with short episodes. I can do those for hours.
First results after a few minutes.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-38896790
“No evidence of shrinking”
“We can’t tell”
