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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    1 year ago

    And the growing success of short form content on Tiktok, Youtube and Twitter for example seems to support this claim.

    You can’t really make a conclusion from this. Maybe our short attention span is the reason short form content is so popular.

    I guess it’s not our attention span declining, but just that we are not used to waiting or getting bored.

    • I noticed my capability to keep my attention on a single subject dramatically increased after Reddit shit the bed and killed 3rd party apps, making me effectively quit social media for a month or two.

      I should also really drop Lemmy as well, as much as it is fun it is constantly nagging my brain for attention. It’s better than Reddit imo, but short-form content really does make you less able to keep your mind focused. After all, a distraction is just a couple taps away…