I guess the question is not has attention spans declined, I think pretty much everyone can say yes.
I suppose the question is, does it matter?
Have attention spans been declining?
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Re: Have attention spans been declining?
#82My biggest problem with attention span is my eyesight. It has been deteriorating badly from myopia to having an added farsightedness, so that there is only a small range where I see clearly with or without my glasses.
I can't motivate myself to get new glasses with progressive lenses because apparently they bring their own new problems.
Re: Have attention spans been declining?
#83Trying to read classic literature really makes this apparent. Hemingway's Sun Also Rises must have been a riveting adventure story when it was published in 1926, but how can it compete with 10,000 hours of adventure travel on youtube, netflix etc.? Same with Moby Dick in 1850s... these were glimpses into exotic lives rarely heard of back then, but today you can find those stories or similar in vivid moving pictures a…
I don't think you read Hemingway or Melville for riveting stories per se, but for their prose. The way they convey their stories in words that pique your curiosity or tickle your aesthetic sense. Words that express an idea or feeling you'd not encountered before, or express an idea or feeling you are familiar with in a totally fresh and unfamiliar way (btw their styles are very different, so you may very well find one engaging while the other leaves you flat, and of course some people will enjoy both or neither).
For example, I have never read "The Sun Also Rises," but I looked at the sample on Amazon and came across this on the second page: "I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together, and I always had a suspicion that Robert Cohn had never been middleweight boxing champion, and that perhaps a horse had stepped on his face..." After a few matter-of-fact paragraphs, the narrator suddenly slaps the reader with this frank and funny statement of his utter cynicism. That kind of thing pulls me in. I want to know more about this narrator and see what other shocking things he may have to say.
Re: Have attention spans been declining?
#84I like the theory that the reason attention span has declined is because the demand for quality has hugely increased. Since there are so many blogs, films, books and videos out there, we no longer want to waste time on things that don't entertain or provide value to us. If in the past you might've given in and read or watched through boring parts because there was less options available, now people demand less B.S. a…
I think you are confusing quality with quantity.
Quantity of dopamine bursts that is
Re: Have attention spans been declining?
#85I went to a theater to watch Mission: Impossible last night. It has a really long runtime (2h 48m) and, toward the end of the film, I started seeing multiple people pull out their phones for a time check; I had to stop myself from doing the same.
My regular reminder that 2001: A Space Odyssey was only 2h 23m, and that movie had an intermission at the cinema. Tess of the d'Urbervilles? 18 minutes longer than M:I, and that one had an intermission, too. Ghandi had an intermission, but $DEITY, no human bladder can hold that much so it was kind of required.
Your Marvel movie is approaching 3 hours, and no intermission? Fuck that, I'll watch it at home while your CEO whines that no one goes to the movies anymore.
(Wait a minute, Oppenheimer is three hours long? Sorry, ChrisN, but that's one's getting streamed in my living room, too.)
Re: Have attention spans been declining?
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think that has to do with excessively long movies Anecdotal experience but we (n=2) didn't have the urge to pull out our phones on Oppenheimer (180 minutes).
Oppenheimer is not an action flick. :) Movies with a compelling story keep your attention, but with action, your brain can only take so much stimulation. Unless it has a really compelling story, your mind will wander.
It's incredibly difficult to keep a viewers attention for 3 hours without them taking a single break, even if they are compelling. I was starting to get antsy in general around the 2h 30m mark.
Re: Have attention spans been declining?
#87My attention span is too low to read the article. Can someone summarize it?
I would, but laziness is on the increase and it's too much effort to type.
Re: Have attention spans been declining?
#88I may be reading this incorrectly, but in the article, the 65% appears to be authors confidence in the statement that attention spans appear to be declining, as denoted by the sub-script. Whereas in the HN title it reads as if it's saying a "65% decline in attention span". Various other assertions in the post also have sub-script confidences associated e.g. "my guess: yes90%". I could totally believe that there has b…
> Whereas in the HN title it reads as if it's saying a "65% decline in attention span". Perhaps the submitter's attention span ran out.
For related reasons, I like the blog's claim that much of the difficulty in establishing whether the proposition is true or not is because none of the wealth of literature on attention span was in the form of long term studies. Perhaps the researchers got bored and moved on to something else!
Re: Have attention spans been declining?
#89I may be reading this incorrectly, but in the article, the 65% appears to be authors confidence in the statement that attention spans appear to be declining, as denoted by the sub-script. Whereas in the HN title it reads as if it's saying a "65% decline in attention span". Various other assertions in the post also have sub-script confidences associated e.g. "my guess: yes90%". I could totally believe that there has b…
It would be nice if HN titles actually had to match submission titles.
Re: Have attention spans been declining?
#90I feel increasing frustration every time I see a graph with a clear upward trend being waved off as "probably just better awareness". I am even more frustrated when it's a graph tracking some mental health issue. If adult ADHD numbers have doubled, that should mean something.