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Have attention spans been declining?

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Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#381

Post by somenameforme »

rjzzleep wrote: post #347
mlyle wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip side is that when people get used to consuming content in 30 second blipverts, they become unable to maintain attention through a 10 second break in the action. I don't know for sure about causation, but the students that I see incessantly consume tiktok completely lose state and working context in a very short time. It's a very strong correlation. (And, I disagree a bit with your premise: for those of us wh…

TL;DR if we keep the direct environment of our child clean and limit distractions she's calm, and focused. If we don't she gets whiny and somewhat unbearable. I'm raising a child right now and it's pretty simple to observe a few simple patterns: 1. if there is stuff in her visible range during any activity that is even mildly interesting she wants it and it distracts from any activity. be it her own scooter, or her o…

A "neat" thing is that this exact same behavior is present in adults. Numerous studies have demonstrated a negative impact on focus (and other factors) when a person's phone is in their vicinity, even if it's completely inactive. I'd hypothesize it's our bodies becoming somewhat acclimated to the little micro-dopamine bursts you're going to get each time you get a bzzt, brrt, beep, or other sort of "engagement" (read: addiction) optimized notifier letting you know that something has happened. Even just seeing your phone, your body just starts anticipating it, and waiting for its next hit - in the same way your mouth may begin to salivate when looking at a delicious plate of food.

I suspect we'll look back at this era we're living in, the same way we might look back at the 19th century. In the 19th century cocaine started showing up in just about everything. It was used in medicinal tonics, casual drinks like Coca Cola (cocaine + kola nut), and more. People would use it recreationally, employers would give it to their workers, inventors and others (among them, Thomas Edison) would use it to improve their productivity, and more. Given the dramatic side effects of cocaine, people certainly realized there was a problem - but inertia is one hell of a beast.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#382

Post by bilekas »

I remember reading a study about a year ago I've been trying for a while to find it and post here now but basically it was observing that people, specifically kids recently have had instant access to information that they needed and so when something was taking longer than expected to absorb the information it would be passed on for some faster method of absorbing the info.

The jist of the study was that it wasn't so much attention spans are in decline but patience for consuming information. I am not that particular generation but for sure if I'm looking for some info recently i get frustrated if I don't get the info I'm looking for quick enough.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#383

Post by wraptile »

mlyle wrote: post #369
wraptile wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when people get used to consuming content in 30 second blipverts, they become unable to maintain attention through a 10 second break in the action. I keep hearing this but is there actual evidence? My anecdata is that I can watch tiktoks and read programming books all day without one impacting the other. I honestly have trouble believing that our attention mechanism is so flawed it can be broken so easily. I think…

Well, we're discussing a post that looks at a bunch of moderate-quality evidence in this area. Unfortunately, no one had the foresight to realize that attention span measures would be very important for us to have high quality control evidence before 2000. So we have some moderate quality measures that say that attention span has become lower over time. And we have higher quality measures that show that low attention…

> In my opinion, our attention mechanism is very weak compared to the demands of academic study and modern knowledge work.

Or it could be that academic study and modern knowledge work is just severaly outdated in their data delivery methods compared to contemporary techniques used in tools that "cause attention span issues" like Tiktok.

Maybe the UX of a traditional science paper has to be reviewed instead of trying to fault the end user for not torturing themselves trying to ingest something that has UX from half a century ago.

To me the issue seems pretty clear. We got new information delivery methods that are significantly better and when going back to old methods we naturally get unsatisfied. Does that mean we are getting "dumber" as "attention deficit" memes imply or that certain fields are just failing to catch up?

We can simply accept that ingesting old data types will be more difficult for the new generations or update them to match new expectations. Either way this sounds like whole lot of nothing for most of us.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#384

Post by sgath92 »

Terr_ wrote: post #306
kshacker wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My attention span is making me re-read your comment to decipher whether I agree or disagree. Jury is still out on this one :) Anyways, over a decade back, I was watching a recording of a musical artist from either the 70s or 80s, and was surprised at the quality of the presentation (audio, music, harmony within the team) and was thinking on the same lines - good vs good enough, and how this team working in the 70s ma…

I think my underlying thesis probably renders to something like: The idea that people in the past had personalities that valued the pursuit of perfection more-highly than now is often assumed, but seldom is good evidence given to support it. In many cases it may be explained by survivorship-bias or by applying inaccurate modern assumptions about the relative costs of different materials/labor and the prestige/rarity…

> The idea that people in the past had personalities that valued the pursuit of perfection more-highly than now is often assumed, but seldom is good evidence given to support it.

I think its not hard to show that people have come to prioritize the low cost of goods/services at the cost of quality as a way of artificially propping up lifestyle habits as available disposable income goes down.

An appliance like a refrigerator or clothes washer had to be good in 1960 not just because of its cost (which in today's money accounting for inflation is huge) but because consumers had the ability to financially demand it.

But if household disposable incomes go down (for a myriad of reasons), to where even two adult fulltime earners can barely tread water, a "good" appliance is unthinkably cost prohibitive in the short term. A cheap one that will barely outlast the warranty is their solution. And when it fails (and it will) you go buy another and it goes to a landfill.

Its like the typical exmaple of the poor person who buys shitty work boots that only last a few months because they can't drop a couple hundred up front for ones that will last decade(s).

In the US (can't speak for elsewhere), your 1950s stereotypical middleclass sitcom style family lifestyle died around 1970. Its been kept going ever since by the combos of decreasing quality wherever possible while using debt to wallpaper over the lack of micro-economic sustainability (hence the huge % of the population who has no real savings, little or no retirement investments, and will loose their home if they get a bad medical diagnosis).

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#385

Post by vjk800 »

rjzzleep wrote: post #347
mlyle wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip side is that when people get used to consuming content in 30 second blipverts, they become unable to maintain attention through a 10 second break in the action. I don't know for sure about causation, but the students that I see incessantly consume tiktok completely lose state and working context in a very short time. It's a very strong correlation. (And, I disagree a bit with your premise: for those of us wh…

TL;DR if we keep the direct environment of our child clean and limit distractions she's calm, and focused. If we don't she gets whiny and somewhat unbearable. I'm raising a child right now and it's pretty simple to observe a few simple patterns: 1. if there is stuff in her visible range during any activity that is even mildly interesting she wants it and it distracts from any activity. be it her own scooter, or her o…

Something I've learned from raising children is that the behaviour patterns the children follow are ultimately the same behaviour patterns us adults follow too. We just like to pretend that we know better or have overcome the childish instincts, but in many cases we have not. We act exactly same way and then come up with some bullshit excuse for it after the fact that makes it seem like we are not exactly the same species of monkeys acting on instincts like our children are.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#386

Post by naavis »

rjzzleep wrote: post #347
mlyle wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip side is that when people get used to consuming content in 30 second blipverts, they become unable to maintain attention through a 10 second break in the action. I don't know for sure about causation, but the students that I see incessantly consume tiktok completely lose state and working context in a very short time. It's a very strong correlation. (And, I disagree a bit with your premise: for those of us wh…

TL;DR if we keep the direct environment of our child clean and limit distractions she's calm, and focused. If we don't she gets whiny and somewhat unbearable. I'm raising a child right now and it's pretty simple to observe a few simple patterns: 1. if there is stuff in her visible range during any activity that is even mildly interesting she wants it and it distracts from any activity. be it her own scooter, or her o…

I feel like all of these patterns apply to adults too. I can definitely relate to number 1 and number 3.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#387

Post by sgath92 »

notahacker wrote: post #127
carabiner wrote: post #41

Trying 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…

The average person in 1926 didn't and wouldn't read Hemingway either. The first print run of Sun Also Rises was 5000 copies. Most people didn't read much and a significant proportion couldn't read at all, and I suspect most of the silent movies of the time would seem quite trivial compared with much amateur YouTube content today I suspect that in 100 years time, bestselling books particularly popular with today's tec…

> I suspect most of the silent movies of the time would seem quite trivial compared with much amateur YouTube content today

I can't say what constituted "most film" in 1926 (are we going by what sold the most tickets? big blockbusters versus daily newsreels & cartoons?) but if you look at the era of 1925-1927 it includes Phantom of the Opera, Battleship Potemkin, The Vanishing American, The Bat, Metropolis, and Wings. Many of this list is iconic to this day to where they continue to be referenced & emulated in pop culture that many people recognize even if they haven't seen the originals before.

Granted this discussion will be hamstrung by how much film has been "lost" with so much of that content no longer in living memory at all (to say if it was masterpieces or crappy filler).

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#388

Post by mlyle »

wraptile wrote: post #383
mlyle wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we're discussing a post that looks at a bunch of moderate-quality evidence in this area. Unfortunately, no one had the foresight to realize that attention span measures would be very important for us to have high quality control evidence before 2000. So we have some moderate quality measures that say that attention span has become lower over time. And we have higher quality measures that show that low attention…

> In my opinion, our attention mechanism is very weak compared to the demands of academic study and modern knowledge work. Or it could be that academic study and modern knowledge work is just severaly outdated in their data delivery methods compared to contemporary techniques used in tools that "cause attention span issues" like Tiktok. Maybe the UX of a traditional science paper has to be reviewed instead of trying…

> Or it could be that academic study and modern knowledge work is just severaly outdated in their data delivery methods compared to contemporary techniques used in tools that "cause attention span issues" like Tiktok.

Some things take time. You don't perfect a painting technique, explore a family of variations in a musical theme, analyze a complicated social issue, or solve non-trivial equations in a 25 second slice.

The students that I'm talking about-- they can ask their peer a question that they're interested in learning the answer to, and then have their attention wander and lose state in the time it takes their friend to finish chewing. This used to be pretty rare; now it's distressingly common.

I'm all for multi-modality and different ways to present information. But most people need to develop the skills to show up and think deeply for >20 minute spans.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#389

Post by rypskar »

mikestew wrote: post #85
cglong wrote: post #5

I 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…

Wasn't intermission because movies was on physical rolls (sorry, don't remember correct name) which had a maximum length and they needed an intermission to change roll?

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#390

Post by benjaminwootton »

rjzzleep wrote: post #347
mlyle wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip side is that when people get used to consuming content in 30 second blipverts, they become unable to maintain attention through a 10 second break in the action. I don't know for sure about causation, but the students that I see incessantly consume tiktok completely lose state and working context in a very short time. It's a very strong correlation. (And, I disagree a bit with your premise: for those of us wh…

TL;DR if we keep the direct environment of our child clean and limit distractions she's calm, and focused. If we don't she gets whiny and somewhat unbearable. I'm raising a child right now and it's pretty simple to observe a few simple patterns: 1. if there is stuff in her visible range during any activity that is even mildly interesting she wants it and it distracts from any activity. be it her own scooter, or her o…

I think we are on the right of the bell curve with our kids discipline (healthy eating, little screen time) but the picture you paint sounds miserable.

A sparse environment, no TV, simple toys, denying gifts from grandparents isn’t something noble.

Of course don’t let them eat cookies before dinner and sit on iPads all day, but there has to be some balance for everyone’s enjoyment and sanity.

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