5,4,3,2,1… NEXT! Shortened Attention Spans In the Age of Social Media

         Twitter, Facebook, commercials, and even the ever popular kid’s show Spongebob Squarepants have come under fire as causes for the decreasing length of attention spans in our population. Our generation experienced a drastic change in the way we access information with the birth of high-speed internet and overly commercialized television. During my investigation of this issue I found very few articles about how to reverse these effects. Instead, almost every article made suggestions as to how a publisher can make their website or blog more adaptive to this lack of attention. Some of the suggestions made by these authors included: (http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/10526-optimizing-your-website-for-short-attention-spans-six-tips)

·         Keeping all major thoughts to under 140 characters, the same length as a tweet

·         Vary the type of media posted- pictures, videos, text

·         Split up large amounts of information

·         Use bullet points to make skimming easy

We now live in a world of instant gratification. If a webpage takes too long to load, we move on to the next one. If a commercial takes too long to get to the point, we change the channel. If a tweet goes longer than 140 characters and you have to click a link to read the rest, forget about it! One study found that over 30% of viewers will abandon a slow site between one and five seconds (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media-network/media-network-blog/2012/mar/19/attention-span-internet-consumer). Another study shows that our attention span has decreased from 12 minutes to 5 minutes in the last 10 years. So what happens when you take away all the sources of social media for 24 hours? Subjects were said to feel “phantom vibrations” and reached for a phone that wasn’t there and even became anxious and fidgety during the time period.

   

Not all blame for shortened attention span should fall on these social media sources.  Attention deficit disorder is common among children due to a delay in brain development. With the increasing amount of television, internet, and video games being consumed it can sometimes be hard to tell where to place the blame. ADD effects mostly younger children so studies investigating the causes of this lack of focus normally feature older children and younger adults since old age can also be a factor when measuring attention.

The University of Maryland campus is the perfect place to conduct a study measuring the effects of social media on attention. Our generation has been one of the most strongly affected by the growth of the internet, and more specifically, Twitter and Facebook. In order to measure the effect of the media on focus, I would plan a study that measures the time it takes for a subject to switch focus from a piece of print media and compare that time to how long it takes for them to lose focus when reading an online article. Based on the following graph, more than half of students will abandon whatever they are reading in 80 seconds or less.

 (http://vator.tv/news/2010-10-14-digital-media-shrinking-your-attention-span)

With sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr popping up all over the internet, it’s impossible to know just what the future holds for social media outlets. By the time our kids are looking up news articles and chatting with friends, headlines will be no more than five words long and attention spans will last no more than a few seconds. 

In case you want to shorten your attention span just a little bit more...