Is content making audiences less focused?

Living in a digital era means there are constantly hundreds of videos, posts, messages, and notifications popping up all over our devices - distracting us at every move. Even just opening your phone to read a simple email can somehow find you an hour deep into TikTok, asking yourself, ‘how did I get here?’  

A quick search on Google will bring up results suggesting that adult humans have roughly an eight second attention span when it comes to using the internet, supposedly down from 12 seconds in 2000. Some experts oppose these exact figures, but I think it’s safe to say that as a species, if something is boring online, we will absolutely click away in a matter of seconds. 

Shamefully enough, I have to admit that once or twice I have found myself sitting at my desk realising I have my laptop, iPad and mobile phone all in use at the same time, and I’m hoping I might not be the only one who has noticed this before. 

As soon as something that we are viewing, whether it be on a phone, a TV, or any kind of screen, becomes remotely disinteresting we automatically look for the next point of interest - I think it's probably muscle memory for most of us at this point.

One of the most extreme cases I have seen of the internet catering to our increasingly shorter attention spans are videos circulating on TikTok, in which the screen is split into two halves; one half is likely someone talking or explaining something, while the other half is someone playing a video game - some kind of new tactic to get us to listen to anything, I presume. 

Only a few years ago, long-form content on platforms such as YouTube were immensely popular, with the largest channels amounting millions of views per video in the 2010s. Most of us would happily sit and watch a video that could be nearing 40 minutes or more, yet nowadays, even YouTube, although still ever popular, seems to have geared itself towards the short form content trend. There is now a section on there called ‘Shorts’, dedicated to clips and shortened videos - ideal for our attention spans. 

As videos and content get shorter and shorter, the desire to watch for longer, or stay on the same webpage for more than a few seconds, will likely only decrease. Hopefully we can somehow save our attention spans in time before we end up getting bored by each other in real life too!

Edited by Eleanor Robinson