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.
Let’s say I can learn a new small skill by reading a book for an hour in the year 1980.
Let’s say I can learn that same skill by reading an article for 10 minutes in 2020.
The information contained in the book and the article are the same, but presented differently. My brain in 2020 will not want to take an hour to digest what it can now digest in 10 minutes. My brain in 2020 now expects a condensed, concise format - it is efficient, and it opens up time for the many other things that I want and/or need to do. I get agitated like a jonesing addict when simple articles drag on and skirt around the point, and if I can’t find the info I’m looking for in the first 30 seconds I will often look for a different one.
And yet I can hike for more than 10 minutes, meditate for more than 10 minutes, drive for more than 10 minutes, play a game for more than 10 minutes, or watch a movie for more than 10 minutes.
I do think our “attention spans” are shortening so-to-speak. But I think this concept is also an oversimplification of attention. I would argue that real attention systems are very different than our lay, simplified concept of attention - and that “attention spans” are not an inherent characteristic, but dependent on many other factors. Someone already pointed out the attention economy, which I think has a lot more explanatory power for the way we operate.
What makes you think language has improved to the point where 10 minutes of reading now conveys the same amount of info as 1 hour of reading in 1980?
Not language; the presentation of language. For example the internet alone has changed access, distribution, syndication, formatting, referencing, and even competition among sources.
It also used to be a serious chore just to get a copy of a study, now I have millions available with almost no time or effort separating me from them. I have ways to parse and filter them, and other methods of getting the desired information in front of my eyes almost immediately - even if I don’t know the specific study that I am looking for. This means I have exponentially more time for processing content, or doing whatever else I would like to do with my time.
Additionally formatting has changed significantly during this time. Works used to be presented more as singular objects rife with quotes from references. Now articles are modular - they are presented as a single element in a stream, and external references are simply linked. And the text itself has changed due to SEO motivations, which prioritizes understandability (although recently Google has been pushing for long-form content, I find this mostly prioritizes auto-generated spam and endless autobiographies attached to brief recipes).
Certainly, I still have the option to read long-winded essays, and they are still written. And yes, language has changed in this time. But at nowhere near the same pace or effect as the changes in technology and culture over the same time period.
Yes. I would say, not ‘learn’ a skill but ‘grasp’ a skill, though.