There is even some evidence that our attention spans are getting slightly longer because of this technology. On the contrary: It appears that some of our technology actually requires long periods of sustained, engaged attention. A recent study by the Pew Research Center found that long-form content now gets about twice the amount of engagement on mobile platforms that shorter content does.Īll of this is amazing, because we often assume that it is technology that is contributing to our shorter attention spans. Even written content is becoming longer, thanks to the ranking that “long-form” content gets when it comes to SEO. A gamer can spend hours doing this, and it requires quite a bit of attention. They have complex plots, and characters in those games progress through levels by performing interlocking missions and solving complex problems. Video games today are more like interactive movies than they are like the arcade games of our childhood. Seriously, haven’t you ever sat in bed for hours watching episode after episode of a show you loved? And today’s shows are much more complex and attention-demanding than those of a generation ago. If our attention spans were really so short, we would never be able to: There are plenty of times when it seems like our attention wanders all over the place.īut stop and think of the times when you do pay attention to something for an extended period of time. We are bombarded by emails, texts, and pop-ups from our productivity tools. No doubt we are highly distracted in our lives. Test “The Short Attention Span Claim” Yourself Content would have to be extremely short and snappy, and it would have to be “in your face” all the time just to compete with all the other sources of information.Īgain, that’s what training content would have to be like if the claim of short attention spans were true. If this were true, it would have some serious implications for how people create instructional materials and organize their corporate training. According to one popular industry myth, we now have an attention span shorter than that of a goldfish! (I will plead guilty here-we here at HSI shared around this myth as well when we first heard about it.) Indeed, the common wisdom today is that the average person’s attention span is about 8 seconds long-down from about 11 seconds just a decade ago. The assumption that attention spans are getting shorter and shorter has dramatically shaped the eLearning industry, with directors of learning looking for newer and newer technologies to cater to our diminished attention spans, and content providers building the assumption into their instructional design. These days you can’t turn around without seeing another article on how short our attention spans are, or how distracted we are at work.
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