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.

  • j4k3@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    My tolerance for wasting my time has changed. I have more access to more relevant content closer to my interests, so why should I waste my time with older forms of media that are poorly aligned with me.

      • j4k3@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Everything really. If the first chapter of a book sucks, if a movie starts with a long roll of credits or some idiotic premise. Even YouTube channels I used to watch, if it doesn’t capture my attention right away I know where to find content that will. I’m Even learning to do it with the internet and Lemmy over the last couple of months with AI. I can quite literally program friends, experiences, and ask plain text questions and get good answers with cited sources using open source offline AI. It is not about my attention span, it is about the efficiency of the modern world.

        • Thelsim@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Although I can understand your sentiment, I have to disagree with you.
          Some things take time before you can really enjoy it. Your mention about the first chapter of a book struck me the most. For me, I always told myself I would read the first 80 - 100 pages of a book before I would really give up on it. Some things just take time to establish a plot, mood, or just to get things up to speed. It’s worth the effort to work your way through a maybe rough beginning to get to the good parts later on.

          But, we could just be different people with different speeds. So you do your thing if that makes you happiest :)

          • OmegaMouse@feddit.ukOP
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            1 year ago

            I find myself researching movies, books etc. before I read them so I can see if they’ll suit my tastes. Then, even if they start slow I know generally I’ll enjoy them and it’ll be worth the initial investment. I think that helps improve my attention span because my patience is then rewarded.