A little observation of attention span
By: Tony Ng Wei Shyang
Tags: Attention Economy, Attention, Social Media, Long Reads, Social Change

Living in 2020, we are getting faster and faster internet. High-speed internet is also cheaper than it ever had been. All of us has a smartphone that is more powerful than a supercomputer 50 years ago, at our disposal. Our phone is loaded with apps, and some of these apps have the size larger than an entire library during the medieval period. What has these changes our attention span?

TLDR: Perhaps the reason I am writing this section and you are reading this section might be a sign of shorter attention span of a lot of people, but the fact that you are on medium and is seeking for a longer form of content, and had finished hundreds if not thousands of article might also be a sign of the rise of new long-form media format, and they are here to stay.

A little millennial joke

Comic by Steve Kelly show the irony of decreased in attention span causes less focus on the issue itself.

“8 seconds versus 9 seconds, which do you think is the average attention span of millennial as opposed to a goldfish? Goldfish has 9 seconds.”

Although various debates have it on whether goldfish actually has 9 seconds and the accuracy of method on how average attention span of millennial is measured, there is no doubt a joke is made due to a certain truth to it. Perhaps, millennial do has a shorter average attention span.

Social Media

Perhaps, social media is one of the main reason behind it. People have access to less information back then before the internet. They are not bombarded by a sea of information in a very short period of time. Not until Friendster and Myspace came along. Now, everyone can interact with each other at any time where they have access to their personal computer. Then, Facebook came along with its revolutionary newsfeed. What this essentially means is that everyone has a platform to share their thoughts and life with everyone else in the world. Conversely, everyone can also keep up to date with their friends through the very same newsfeed.

However, all of those can only be accessed through their personal computer, which is both bulk and heavy. The internet speed is also not great back then. Most people also do not connect their phone to the internet due to price and use case. Then, it came the introduction of the smartphone.

Smartphone at our disposal

Comic by reddit user @the_anecdotist135

Steve Job introduce its first iPhone in 2007. Other phone manufacturers follow suit in order to keep up with the competition. Hooray, now we truly enter the age where we have access to social media anywhere, anytime. Try and observe the percentage of time in a day where you have access to your phone without walking a single step. It’s almost always around us. On top of that, many even feel insecure if they go outside without carrying a smartphone. That is how big a smartphone plays a part in our life.

Race to a shorter onboarding journey

Having access all the time everywhere is not enough. A new race had emerged, and it is all about getting user hooked in a shorter period of time. Snapchat introduces the story, which is a format that allows people to share snapshots of their life. Instagram copies it. Eventually, it transforms into short video of Tiktok and Douyin. Let us observe how short is the onboarding period of Tiktok/Douyin as opposed to Instagram.

Instagram homepage at the left, IGTV at the center, and shop at the right.

If we open Instagram, it shows us a homepage with the story at the top, newsfeed at the centre, and the menu at the bottom. We then have to decide to take one of the following action.

Choose a person in the story bar and open up their story Scroll the newsfeed and interaction with the newsfeed as desired Press the magnifying glass icon at the bottom menu and opens up the explore page

From left to right: Tiktok homepage, comment section, share dialog, share preview. Notice how the video is already playing on the homepage.

In contrast, the moment you open Tiktok/Douyin, you are already watching one of the short videos. The video is likely to be shorter than 15 seconds, then you move on to the next video, and the next video, and the next video. That is how fast Tiktok tries to get people hooked in. With the practically infinity supply of videos, one can waste hours before he realizes that hours had passed.

Streaming Services

Social media is not the only culprit. Streaming services are the other main culprit. You might think Instagram’s main competitor is Twitter, but it’s actually Youtube. Youtube has so many features that attempt to get people hooked on as long as it can. There is the autoplay feature that automatically helps you to go to the next video right after you finish one. There is also the recommendation bar at the right in case you might be bored with the video you are watching and is looking for a new video. There is also a recommendation section in the homepage where it attempts to get you into watching one of those without you searching for it. On top of that, we all know how accurate the Youtube recommendation engine is in recommending videos that we might like. In fact, it is even able to recommend a video that you do not know you will like. It is safe to say that the Youtube algorithm knows more about your video interest than you yourself did.

Data, data, and optimization

It is by no coincidence that all of these apps are so addictive as thousands of smartest brain behind these apps are optimizing the apps for a single metric, average session duration. Any changes that increase session duration, even by 0.1 seconds, is good. Conversely, any changes that decrease it is bad. They do not care if you might be having an addiction issue that might lead to a problem in an interpersonal relationship, or you might be having the most important exam in your life next week, and instead of studying for the exam, you are wasting your time away by watching Tiktok videos. It is by no mean that those people behind those apps are evil, nor are those consequences their intention. However, there is no good and evil in engineering, only achieving a goal, or not achieving one.

Addiction and the evolutionary biology basis behind it

During the hunter-gatherer period, a person in a tribe works closely with each other, constantly helping each other out. On one day, one might help his neighbour to guard his house against wildlife, wild on the other day, the neighbour shares their excess food when one has no yield from one’s hunting session. The person who carries this attribute is more likely to build a good reputation.

Reputation means almost everything. With enough reputation, you can become the leader of the tribe. The strongest person in the tribe will not be able to fight against you if you ask for help from another 2 random man who is not as strong as him. Not to mention, a good reputation also gets you all the women in the tribe, allow you to ask for help more easily in a dire situation, and all of these, which in turn, increase your chances of passing down your genes to the next generation. To sum it up, it increases your social hierarchy.

It is this exact point that social media had exploited to produce millions of addicts to the platform. One might simply want to increase his reputation in a community through social media by establishing a good relationship with other people. Another might be trying to climb the social hierarchy by establishing his social standing through various factor such as wealth, corporate hierarchy, physical strength, etc.

On top of that, the hunter-gatherer who always able to complete what they set out to do is more likely to survive as they are more likely to have a fitter attribute for survival in a harsh environment. It is this attribute that Youtube exploited. It is the illusion of completing things that provide people with a sense of productivity. They feel they had completed something, learned something useful, learned something that they did not know before, and continue moving on to the next video. After finishing every video, it gives the person a dose of dopamine, which the person continues seeking more in the videos to come.

Sense of belonging is also another attribute that both streaming platform and social media had exploited. In the past, it is a tribal issue, where one tribe clashes with another tribe. Because of this, everyone in a tribe has a sense of belonging in the tribe. It is a tribe versus another tribe. Since the industrial revolution, it is no longer the case. Before the industrial revolution, one might still be required to rely on their family to a very large extent for survival. Since the industrial revolution, the role had been taken over by the state. Now, one no longer required to rely on their family for survival (except when they are a child). All one need to do is to work, and in return, they will be able to buy anything that is required for survival in the market. There is nothing that is required for survival that cannot be purchased in the market.

What this essentially means is it’s individual versus the state. People are more desperate to find a belonging than ever before. Facebook groups, Youtube community, all of these exploited that part of our brain which long for belonging. It also provides an escape to some people for an escape from whatever their responsibility is, providing them with a sense of achievement for being able to find belonging in any of these community.

Of course, there is a lot more reason that contributes to the addiction of one towards any of these platforms. I might not be aware of some of them as well. Furthermore, one reason might apply to some, while not the others. One can also be addicted due to several reasons combined. However, I believe you get my point, which is there is an evolutionary biology basis behind the addiction of these platforms, which makes it even harder to resist them, despite one might aware they are both addicted, and the reason behind their addiction.

Simplification of messages

Comic by The Joy of Tech. The complex idea of the effect of social media are simplified to “makes things better”

Everything needs to be optimized. The best performing length of a video in Tiktok is 15 seconds. The best performing medium article length is 7 minutes read. The best performing youtube video is 10 minutes. These lead to simplification of messages in order to fit into the desired length. Simplification of the message means losing some not so important details. Simplification of the message also means not providing a full picture of what a message it needs to be. To some, it might be beneficial as they are now aware of some messages which they would not be exposed in the first place as they might not have the patience to go through the long-form messages. However, it brings to the next point.

The problem of simplification of messages is without knowing the full picture, they assume that they are already expert of the subject. They thought they know the full picture but in reality, it’s all coming from a 10 minutes summary video. This is behind one of the biggest problems we are facing right now, which is the polarization of ideology.

Let’s take abortion as an example. If you agree with abortion, you are liberal, you pro-choice. If you disagree with abortion, you are pro-life. However, let’s pause for a while and think about this issue. First, when we talk about pro-life, at what stage of a fetus has life? Is it at 1-week mark or 3-months mark? Should pro-choice always be allowed to exercise? If one gets pregnant by always practising unprotected sex with various different f**k-buddy she came across, while the other gets pregnant after getting raped when she is walking home after a tiring day of overtime, perhaps the former should assume much more responsibility than the latter. There is no such conversation going around from people who discuss this issue. People take pride in their stance from whichever group that they are from. Republicans take pride in pro-life stance because that is the Republican view, and the Democrats take pride in pro-choice as that is the Democrats view.

By Zits Comic. It shows people act differently in real life versus on social media.

The same issue can be applied to many discussions, which is not limited to lockdown during COVID-19, gun control, drug control, social welfare benefits, global warming, pornography law, etc. Most of the discussion regarding these issues is just too simple. There is no depth. There is only right and wrong. Many people are no longer able to have a conversation if they are unable to identify from which side are you from.

Correlation versus causation

Do all of the points above causes to a shorter attention span? Or do a causes attention span leads to the issue above? We do not know. Therefore, please be aware that they might simply be a correlation, where one tends to exists in the presence of another.

The gloomy image of technology, a bigger picture

So, technology reduces people’s attention span? Too simple. It might be true for a lot of people, which is where the millennial jokes came about, but the opposite is equally true. In fact, more and more people are seeking out for a longer form of content these days. This point will be elaborated in the following section, which hopes to provide a much complete picture as opposed to the pessimistic view of where humanity stands in the midst of technology today.

Bandwidth problem

You may be aware that we had covered the bandwidth problem in previous sections. One problem that technology had solved is the bandwidth problem. Instead of the traditional medium of reaching the masses, which practically limited to press, TV broadcast network, CDs, book publisher, and a few extra more, we have an unlimited option that people can reach now. Anyone can make their own TV shows and release on Youtube. Anyone can release their own song through Spotify. Anyone can also release their article through medium.

Social media had provided unlimited bandwidth to everyone. As a result, everyone is competing against the limited pool of attention, which causes the simplification of messages along with extreme polarization of thinking as they tend to attract more attention. However, as the pendulum swings far towards one direction, it swings back to the opposite direction. As more and more people are tired of these ingenuine pursuits of attention, they look out for genuine content, which leads to the next point.

Rise of genuine intellectual curiosity

Let me start this section by asking a question, what is the best podcast length to maximize the efficiency of effort in producing episode to the minutes listened?

Suggested podcast length taken from theaudacitytopodcast.com

Now, look at the top listened podcast in Spotify in 2020 according to Spotify Wrapped.

Joe Rogan Podcast on Spotify as of 2020–12–12

At a frequency of 2–3 podcast per week, the podcast is surely a hell longer than the recommended length. At a glance from the screenshot, the shortest podcast comes in at 2 hours, while the longest stands at a whopping 4.5 hours! It is insanely long. Not to mention, there seems to be no pattern behind the length of the podcast. If you may have noticed, to be able to listen to all of them, one requires to allocate a lot of times to be able to do so.

Why is Joe Rogan Podcast so popular despite not being optimized to whatever metrics there is. If you listen to the podcast, you will probably already know what could be some of the reasons.

Joe Rogan podcast is all about Joe Rogan having a conversation with all kinds of people with all kinds of mindset and culture. He discusses topics with his guest about topics which they are curious and interested. The only flows of the podcast are wherever the conversation brings. The podcast ends when they finish what they want to discuss, not at some optimized length of the podcast. There is no one message that needs to be delivered regardless of what happens. There is no list of things that need to be said before the end of it. It is for this reason that people drew to it, drew to the mere genuine curiosity of it.

Trends of long-form content

Podcast is not the only long-form medium that is thriving. Jordan Peterson lectures had gained tremendous popularity since he first uploads his lectures many years ago. Various other lectures from different universities such as MIT had also gained a large number of popularity in the past decades. More and more people are also trying out audiobooks, which is an alternative to a physical book, except you can still “read” them when you are driving. Despite various survey and research shows that leisure reading had been in a decline, perhaps the raise of all these alternate sources of long-form content are able to make up the differences, turning from a declining trend to a rising trend.

What do all these mean?

Does technology actually lower down the attention span of a large number of people? Probably yes. It is difficult to ignore the effect of a digital medium on a person's brain.

Some might argue that people these days addicted to social media is the same as people back then addicted to TVs. I would argue it differently. For TV shows, there is a beginning, and there is an end. Those shows are also broadcast at a specific period of time. When the TV is not broadcasting the show, people had no choice but to resort to other methods for spending their free time, among them leisure reading. Not only that, towards the end of show’s broadcast, there is an ending cue telling the person that perhaps he should spend his time on other things. On top of that, there is no precise data available for the engineer behind those networks to engineer the perfect schedule to get everyone hooked all the time.

Unlike social media or youtube, there is no end. There is always another video after finishing one. All of them has infinity scrolling. The content is personalized to each of the end-user in order to get them hooked as long as possible. To say that TV has the same effect on a teenager's brain 30 years ago as social media has on a teenager today is being dishonest. Teenager today are affected far more serious by social media than teenager 30 years ago by the TV.

Perhaps, the true way out is to educate everyone about the benefit and harm of these technological tools. The ultimate goal is to maximize the benefit that we can obtain from them while minimizing the harm that it can be brought forward to us. Perhaps, social media is extremely good at helping you to maintain a relationship with someone despite long physical distances. Perhaps, not so good when one is extremely addicted to it, rely on it as the only source of dopamine source. Perhaps, it is also good at fostering discussion with someone who has such different views that the discussion is not possible before. Perhaps, it is not so good when it acts like a machine that reinforces one’s confirmation bias, polarizes people more so than ever.

Essentially, technology is just a tool. A tool is indifferent to good and evil. It is how a tool being used that result in a more or less desired outcome as one wishes it to be.