What Is An Animal With A Short Attention Span

Reading Fourth dimension: eight minutes

For something to go a scientific law, it must be rigorously tested and repeatedly observed. Once information technology's established equally police, we can count on that phenomenon to occur beyond all types of conditions.

Marketing has its own set of laws: The Iv Ps, detect your unique selling point, pb with value, focus on the client, and continue information technology brusque, considering our attention spans are at present shorter than that of a goldfish.

Most of these were adult over decades of trial and fault, and most of us rarely question their origin or veracity.

But there's a large, scaley problem with 1 of those supposed "laws" I mentioned above.

The "Goldfish" one; Information technology's not truthful. It has no basis. It's seemingly pulled out of thin air.

It's a load of carp .

(Encounter what I did at that place?)

If you're unfamiliar, the idea is that the internet is causing our attention spans to compress, and they're now only viii seconds long, which is (supposedly) shorter than a goldfish'due south attention span.

This claim, which can be found in reputable publications all over the internet, is congenital on evidence that is at best shaky, and at worst completely fabricated. It relies on assumptions that cannot be safely made, and falls apart under the nearly basic observation.

Think about information technology. If our attention span is really 8-seconds, how are Netflix binges a matter? How was the hit of the summer a 45-minute long music video? Why are more people spendinglonger hours playing video games?

If this whole goldfish theory is true, none of those things would be possible.

Where did this fluffy fact come from, anyway? How was it measured? Who floated this idea get-go?

I had to put on my net archaeologist hat on and dig deep for this one, but the answers I plant should teach united states of america all an important lesson nigh proper citation and skepticism equally content creators.

What Is a Curt Attention Span Anyway?

Various versions of this claim tin can be found all over the internet, ranging from respected publications to wing-by-night blogs. It'due south been seen in Time magazine, Marketplace, and The New York Times. Marketing blogs accept been particularly fond of the goldfish tidbit. And why not? Information technology'south just too juicy to pass up.

Marketers are in the concern of getting attention, and it sure seems like that's getting harder and harder everyday, right?

The problem is, once you lot showtime following the citations (and I utilise that word lightly) on these marketing blogs, things start to autumn apart.

For starters, what does "attention span" even mean? Are we talking about sustained attending to a task, like watching a movie? Shifting attending, like browsing a social media feed? Or the ability to block out distractions and focus, like I'm doing while writing this commodity?

"Attending span" is non a concrete state-of-listen that nosotros tin throw a blanket definition over. Moreover, it's certainly non something nosotros tin can make an apples-to-apples comparison to with a fish. I'm certain a goldfish tin focus on food for longer than ix seconds (big deal, fish, so can I), simply a Stranger Things marathon? C'mon now.

Nearly of the major publications covering this topic cite a written report from Microsoft published in the Bound of 2015. Sure enough, interest in the topic topped out on Google Trends in May of that yr.

Shockingly, many of these publications fail to link the bodily study for readers to inspect. But if you look at the original study, you lot'll notice it came from Microsoft's Canadian Advert function.

There are certainly things to critique nearly the study. It's not peer-reviewed. The authors aren't named. Details virtually the procedure are scarce. Metrics are not conspicuously divers. Not to mention, the whole thing is funded and produced by a company with a vested interest in selling a production that grabs attending. That'south not to say you lot can't take any insights from the report, but that everything must be viewed through a certain filter.

Only the authors do brand an effort to include quantitative information regarding human attention. Though lacking in detail, the written report states that an electroencephalogram (EEG) was used to collect data, so there was an attempt to collect information beyond cocky-reports. They also distinguish between the various types of attention: Sustained, Selective, and Alternating. The report establish that heavy social media users are really better at brusque bursts of hyper-focus.

In that location remains i big, glaring problem with citing this study though: it doesn't actually report the length of our attention bridge, either presently or historically. Nor does it examine a goldfish'due south ability to pay attention to… well, anything.

Information technology does, however, include a nautical chart containing the claim that human attention spans are shrinking and are now shorter than a goldfish'south!

That figure wasn't actually based on data from the written report. This information is drawn from another source, which we can see at the bottom of the page: "Statistic Brain"

That's it? No written report title, author, year, or link? That's non a proper citation. Somewhere, a college professor is crying.

A quick Google search pulls up the folio where this statistic was retrieved (I presume?).

Practice y'all see the trouble hither? Again, we have no links to back up where these figures are beingness pulled from. As best as I tin tell, the "Attending Span Statistics" table on top is beingness attributed to the bottom section, where it lists sources as the National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine, and The Associated Printing (though once more, we have no author, title, yr, or link).

It'southward not even clear which of those three publications is existence cited for the 7 stats listed in the table.

To get a rough idea of when this page first appeared on Statistic Brain's website, I plugged the URL into the Internet Archive's Wayback Motorcar. The oldest version of this page was saved back in February of 2012. Back then, the page only cites "The Associated Press" equally a source for the statistics. The study included in the bottom table sufficiently accounts for the internet browsing statistics, but that report includes nothing about historical attention spans (or goldfish).

Attempts to accomplish Statistics Brainorthward about the source of these figures were unsuccessful.

In order to find the origins of this internet myth, we're going to have to dig deeper.

Attention Span Research: The Origin

Unsatisfied with those sources, I decided to keep investigating. To acquire the origin of this marketing legend, I need to know the very get-go time information technology appeared on the internet.

This is easier said than washed. People accept been using "the attention span of a goldfish" as an idiom for decades, so it's not like we tin can pinpoint the first time this phrase was ever used. But what we can do is pinpoint the kickoff time information technology was used in relation to net browsing.

Filtering Google results by appointment reveals the first time a goldfish's attention span was compared to that of an internet user, and information technology's an article almost web pattern from The Guardian dated September 13th, 2000. (It'south a fascinating read that notwithstanding rings truthful even today).

From the article:

Nonetheless, it seems in this context that the author is using it in a figurative sense.

The next mentions come up in the year 2002, and that's where we find the first instance in which the goldfish comparison is stated every bit factual.

In this BBC article from February of 2002, the unnamed author claims that the "addictive nature of web browsing can leave you with an attention span of nine seconds – the same as a goldfish."

This statement is not supported by a citation; however, the article does quote an MIT researcher by the name of Ted Selker, who states that "our attending span gets affected past the way we practise things." Selker goes on to land that "if nosotros spend our time flitting from i thing to another on the web, we tin get into a habit of not concentrating."

A few months later, the claim reappears in Synapse, a pupil publication from the University of California, San Francisco. This article claims that "MIT researchers" claim our attending span is shorter than that of a goldfish.

That said, Selker, whose long career features an impressive list of research on attention and productivity, told me over the phone that he has no idea where the BBC writer got the goldfish statement from, because it didn't come from him.

"No," Selker stated flatly. "I accept no idea where he got that from."

And so, we're led to a dead end. Though it's been mentioned on the internet for the terminal 16 years, the merits that our attending spans are equal to that of a goldfish is without back up.

And don't forget: the original statistic in question states that our attention spans have beenshrinking since the twelvemonth 2000. But as y'all tin see, people have been claiming that our attention bridge is effectually 8 or 9 seconds long since at least the yr 2002.

The Trouble with Fake Statistics

On its face, the Goldfish Myth (I retrieve we can safely give it that name now) seems pretty harmless. The idea that the cyberspace and mobile devices accept afflicted our attention spans is certainly plausible, and for all we know, it could exist true.

But the betoken is we don't know, andstating information as fact when it has no actual factual basis can exist dangerous.

"When (these stats) beginning to be debunked, people start to think that possibly research in general is not reputable," cautions Jonathan Schwabish, Senior Researcher at the Urban Institute and Founder of the weblog PolicyViz. "That leads downwardly a very dangerous road into a globe where we're able to say whatever we desire and we're not required to back it upwardly."

What inevitably happens with these type of salacious figures is they plough into an endless concatenation of bad citations inside the marketing blog echo sleeping accommodation. Microsoft cites the poorly cited Statistic Brain folio, which sparks Fourth dimension Magazine to cite the Microsoft report, which causes major marketing blogs to cite Time Magazine, which results in thousands of smaller marketing blogs citing the major ones.

It'due south blogs citing blogs citing blogs, and at the stop of that chain, there'due south zero just cobwebs. All this leads to sloppy communication that marketers eagerly follow, hanging their strategy on information that has no basis.

It's not hard to imagine a scenario in which a content marketing team starts dumbing down their content to entreatment to their "goldfish" audition. Since the content is shorter and less engaging overall, the time on page drops fifty-fifty further.

"Oh no!" they think to themselves. "Information technology'southward getting even worse! Now our attention spans are shorter than a fly's!"

It'southward Time Marketers Held Themselves to a Higher Standard

I imagine just well-nigh everyone working in content marketing had to write a few papers in college that required proper citations. Should all that go out the window after graduation day?

You probably don't demand a fully APA format bibliography at the end of every blog post, but checking the veracity of stats and figures and properly linking to the source is just a bones requirement of expert writing.

Unfortunately, the Goldfish Myth is far from the merely make-believe statistic thrown around past marketing blogs. When it comes down to it, content producers need to be more careful with their enquiry. Whether we realize it or non, nosotros wield a certain power when disseminating information to our readers.

"I think it's incumbent upon content creators to think about ways in which they can engage their audience," says Schwabish. "Just considering i might believe that we have a short attention bridge than some sort of fish doesn't mean that nosotros're not able to concord attending."

If nosotros're not careful, falsehoods like the Goldfish Myth can serve as excuses to produce low quality work. If you assume your audience is just a bunch of fish brains, you're non going to put the work into making high quality content. But this only serves to cheapen your work and disrespect your audience. Your audience is complex, intelligent, and emotional. Give them something worth paying attending to.

Worse yet, marketing departments accept built entire strategies on height of this unproven assumption. They've pushed down the quality of their work, fabricated information technology shorter and "snackable," desperate to entreatment to an audience of fish.

Even so that same audience will watch a 4-hr football game or rampage-watch an entire season ofHouse of Cards in a unmarried weekend.

The issue has been a wave of depression-endeavor marketing content that floods your audiences timeline,much of information technology being ignored (see pages 4 and 5). It adds no value to your customer'southward life, but we sit down and wonder why our content strategies aren't working.

And that'southward not to say that short, digestible content doesn't have a identify in a content marketing strategy. Information technology certainly does. And there is data that suggests net users decide very quickly whether to continue reading something or not (the Microsoft report sufficiently covers this).

But that's not because their attention spans are shorter; it's because their BS-detectors are more finely-tuned. We've fed them fish food, and they tin odor information technology from a mile away.

Source: https://www.ceros.com/inspire/originals/no-dont-attention-span-goldfish/

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