Someone get this author a grammarly subscription
Have attention spans been declining?
171–180 of 495 posts
Re: Have attention spans been declining?
#172I feel like my own attention span has declined quite a bit, but I notice that younger people (including my kids) turn to Youtube for education - I've _never_ had an attention span that would allow me to sit through, say, a video programming tutorial (dear God, give me a book), but it seems to be the preferred approach for the next generation.
I don't know that it's much of a positive tho, basically going from active to passive learning. Sitting through videos instead of reading books (much more efficient too IMO) seems like a prime example of attention span erosion to me.
And on top of that they aren't realizing any of the gain of the modern technology here. They buy a $1000 laptop, with $100 a month internet plan, to go watch a 15 minute youtube video with 4 minutes of discrete ads and 4 minutes of sponsor product mentions cut into the actual video, all to gleam a fraction of the understanding that a single page of whatever someone in their position a few decades ago would have checked out for free from the library. Whats all of this effort and technology even for then? The only people who eek out a gain here are the advertisers who now have put themselves front and center of what used to be an entirely unmonetized trip to the library, a known good source of truth.
Re: Have attention spans been declining?
#173We need to distinguish attention span as an inate ability from our time allocation patterns (where we exercise our agency).
Did an elaborate psychological experiment recently (n=1) and was happily surprised that i am still able to read a book cover to cover, no problem :-)
But "finding the time" to do so (i.e prioritising such an experience) is another matter altogether.
Re: Have attention spans been declining?
#174Definitely! Mine is so bad that I didn't even read the full article. After half a paragraph I went back scrolling through TikTok.
Re: Have attention spans been declining?
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look at Avatar (2009) vs the sequel. The original was ~3 hours long, and a pretty ok movie. Kept the attention of everyone in my family from beginning to end. The sequel was 15 minutes longer, but we gave up before the end of the first hour because it was atrocious, particularly the paper-thin "dude, bro" writing.
Avatar 2009 had cutting-edge visuals, but by the 1.5hr mark I was bored. I don't remember the ending, might've walked out.
The look of the original Avatar was something you had never seen before but the story was essentially a reworked version of the overrated Dances with Wolves. The latest Avatar is basically a remake in an aquatic setting and it has none of the visual freshness that the original had. I dutifully watched it when it hit whatever streaming service but it was sort of a waste of time.
Re: Have attention spans been declining?
#176There is far more content than there used to be but no more hours in the day. Our filters must reject more. Yes, there are costs -- deep work & study both suffer -- but there are benefits too: informational content that can be compressed does get compressed. An introduction to a concrete skill that would at one time have been padded out to fit into an hour long movie or lecture might become a 30 minute youtube video…
> There is far more content than there used to be but no more hours in the day. Our filters must reject more.
Attention span cannot be measured by what we don’t pay attention to. And there has always - always - been more information than anyone could process. I think it quite obviously is determined by how long we pay attention to things we chose to engage with. Clearly watching 15 second short clips instead of reading books has had a detrimental effect.
Re: Have attention spans been declining?
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lord of the Rings. An absolutely genre-defining work, but if you read it, it's really friggin slow and not at all compatible with today's attention spans. It's not a demand for quality , it's a demand to be endlessly entertained without having to invest the time or have the patience to wait for a backstory to unfold. Which is fine, I'm opening my phone to doom scroll for a second too, I just don't think it's quality…
I never read lord of the rings. I read the hobbit though. The Tolkien work I struggled with was The Silmarillion. I understand it’s not much like the others and was a posthumous publication, but middle school me struggled to stay interested enough with the way it was structured.
I believe the Silmarillion was really more of reference type book originally so yeah not particularly something you sit down and read all the way through.
Re: Have attention spans been declining?
#178Someone get this author a grammarly subscription
I found it quite well-written. Why so?
Re: Have attention spans been declining?
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lord of the Rings. An absolutely genre-defining work, but if you read it, it's really friggin slow and not at all compatible with today's attention spans. It's not a demand for quality , it's a demand to be endlessly entertained without having to invest the time or have the patience to wait for a backstory to unfold. Which is fine, I'm opening my phone to doom scroll for a second too, I just don't think it's quality…
I never read lord of the rings. I read the hobbit though. The Tolkien work I struggled with was The Silmarillion. I understand it’s not much like the others and was a posthumous publication, but middle school me struggled to stay interested enough with the way it was structured.
I went through a Tolkien phase but, yeah, the Silmarillion was a dutiful struggle.
Re: Have attention spans been declining?
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lord of the Rings. An absolutely genre-defining work, but if you read it, it's really friggin slow and not at all compatible with today's attention spans. It's not a demand for quality , it's a demand to be endlessly entertained without having to invest the time or have the patience to wait for a backstory to unfold. Which is fine, I'm opening my phone to doom scroll for a second too, I just don't think it's quality…
Any tips for this retraining?
Read a bit in bed before sleeping, make this a daily habit; leave all electronic devices outside of your bedroom. No screens in bed; let your mind learn to accept that.
Start with books you can focus on now, gradually move on to more complex works. Don't feel bad about picking a genre which really draws you in. You don't have to read Dickens on day one (although he is a great writer, older works ask a lot in terms of focus and frame of reference, including some understanding of society back then and there), and it's fine to indulge in Young Adult fiction if that works for you (Harry Potter not too demanding to read, and pretty good too).