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Why can’t I Focus Anymore?
When our attention spans are shorter than a goldfish, you know society is in decline
In 2019, a group of European scientists analyzed how quickly trends last on social media and the internet. They collected data from popular websites, like Google, Reddit, and Twitter. As it turns out, the global population unsurprisingly has seen a sharp decline in our attention spans and internet trends dissipate almost as fast as they emerge. On Twitter, for example, the average hashtag remained in the top 50 for roughly 17.5 hours in 2013, but only 11.9 in 2017. This only reinforces the study that Microsoft conducted a few years ago, which found the average attention span has dropped from 12 to 8 seconds in the last 20 years. This is apparently shorter than a goldfish, which can focus for 9 seconds.
The shortened viral sensation of Tweets isn’t entirely caused by truncated attention spans; the sheer influx of information is also to blame. More articles, videos, and stories means that top-streaming hashtags will get buried faster by pure numbers alone. And, of course, the study found that top Google searches change much more quickly as well. Currently, the average person consumes five times more information on a daily basis than they did just three decades ago, and the amount of information they are exposed to on a daily basis will increase at a proliferating rate in the coming decades…
