Attention, Attention

There is no evidence that our attention spans are getting shorter

(Oooh, squirre… no Charlie, focus).

‘Average attention span’ is a meaningless and useless metric, as it’s completely task dependent.

It also isn’t supported by any data

76% of podcast listeners prefer longer content Average podcast listeners consume 4.3 hours per week 83% of listeners consume the majority of each episode, not snippets

73% of individuals have binge-watched a series Netflix use averaged 3.2 hours per day in 2020 400 million hours of podcasts are watched monthly on YouTube

Long-form articles do better than shorter content for social shares. It also drives more traffic 77% of UK consumers watch TV daily Video game market is worth over $500 billion Audiobook sales have grown, as have print books (they outsellf ebooks 4:1)

One thing that has changed?

We switch phone apps faster now than we did a decade ago.

Humans have a limited capacity for information processing

Kahneman’s Capacity Theory of Attention proposes that capacity for attention isn’t static, but it is a function of the reward characteristics of the task, arousal level, motivation and other biological determinants

If we want people to pay attention to what we put out?

We need to consider the reward they get, their arousal when they consume, and their motivation

They’ve not suddenly become more distracted, it’s just that what they end up distracting themselves with is more interesting than what you wanted them to stay on.