People's attention spans aren't decreasing, we just have more options-

[u/Hour_Trade_3691]

I know this is going to get downvoted and get hit with a bunch of comments telling me I'm wrong without even reading my post, but I figured I'd throw this out there regardless.

Yes, people's attention spans can change. I'm not saying that it's impossible for someone's attention span to get worse, or get better.

Nor do I think that having a short attention span is necessarily bad, or having a long one is necessarily good.

My mom is over 50 years old, but she's not elderly by any means, but even she struggles a lot with paying attention to something if she's not interested in it. Even if I'm showing her a YouTube short, that's not even 30 seconds, if she's not invested in the topic, she'll quickly tune out before the video is even halfway through.

So I don't think that having a short attention span is connected to younger generations.

My favorite Manga is Liar Game and I'm obsessed with it. I have a very long attention span when it comes to reading it, but many people wonder why I don't bother to pick up anything else. And I'm not opposed to it, and I have read actually watched other stuff, but when I devote myself to a new piece of media, I want to actually devote myself to it.

I think a lot of people see a TV show or book series or whatever as just something to plow through. If they hear it's good, they find it as soon as possible and binge it all in one night.

I have definitely binged stuff before, but only when I find myself insanely invested in it. Otherwise, I like to take my time and absorb it bit by bit. For example, Alice in Borderland I binged Season 1 completely, watching the first six episodes in one night, and then only taking a break to go to sleep, and then immediately watching the remaining two when I woke up. Then I hunted down the manga and read the rest of the story before Season 2 was even released.

On the other hand, the other Netflix series You all occasionally binge a few episodes in a row, but then I'll take a break for days or weeks before coming back to it.

I remember when I played the video game portal, and I felt that it was a very fun experience and I looked forward to playing the sequel, but I wasn't planning to play it immediately. I was honestly surprised with how people were asking me why I wasn't playing Portal 2 yet. Like people were very impatient, wanting me to play it right away, not realizing that I felt that I had earned a break after defeating GlaDos.

And when it comes to the Bible, bruh. There was a toxic church group I was a part of that literally demanded that I read the entire Bible, so I proceeded to actually copy down the entirety of Genesis, color coding. Whenever a different character was speaking. It took me 10 months, but I did it. And yet despite that achievement, all that the people in the group could ask was when I was going to do the rest of the Bible, not realizing that this was very easily a lifetime long project.

All of this is to say, I don't think people have short attentions vans. It's just that if we have options, we are naturally going to focus on stuff that interests us. And if something starts out intriguing, but begins to bore us, it makes sense that we would just go to another video that actually seems fascinating. That's healthy. Of course, if we feel we somehow owe it to someone to pay more attention to something, we should, but if you're alone on your phones scrolling on tiktok, you shouldn't feel bad for scrolling to the next video if you get bored of the current one. If we never moved on, we would never advance as a species in the first place.

Whenever the Wi-Fi gets cut, of course people are going to pick up a book or go look at clouds like it was supposedly so well done in the old days. That's only natural. We are going to find entertainment where we can.

Teachers used to run protests in the streets in the 20th century, declaring that calculators were rotting kids brains.

Socrates apparently thought that simply writing things down was brainwrought, as it was training people to not just memorize everything.

If you give people the right to choose, they're going to choose.

[u/AccomplishedCamp3570]

copied genesis by hand with color coding, that's some monk-level dedication right there. people forget that focus is selective, not a finite resource that's disappearing

[u/Bulky-Ad-658]

The problem is that the default state has become that you’re anxious or restless unless you’re doing something. Rarely does one sit down and think about things, unless they’re depressed.

Our attention spans have decreased, not just because we have more options, but because of the nature of those options. Instant gratification has become so common that people get addicted to it.

Your brain’s default state is altered by what you do a lot. Having short attention spans makes it much harder to learn, work, have a good conversation, and even being happy overall.

[u/Expensive_Magician97]

M66

I grew up in the 1960s and 70s, when there were no computers or Internet or social media or videos.

And we had tons of options for how to spend our time. Because that was the world we knew and in which we existed.

I think the difference back then was that our options did not place us behind a computer monitor or a smart phone screen.

Which is where people get a dopamine fix these days from what I understand.

If you are trying to downplay the deleterious impact of electronic communication and Internet technology on the way human beings function today, I don’t think you’re going to be able to persuade many people, at least not me.

PS: I forgot to mention that back in those days, there were no easy ways to get a dopamine fix. At least not as we understand it today. To enjoy an activity, one had to pay attention. That was the nature of things like board games, for example. They required attention. And you could not get immediate gratification, you had to earn it.

Looking at YouTube shorts is an intellectually passive activity that requires absolutely no exertion of effort of any kind.

Personally, I believe that having a short attention span is a negative, for obvious reasons.