20 ms·

Have attention spans been declining?

• gxqoz 3y ago
  Maybe it's because, as a post next to this on HN tells me, attentions are off by one?
• schumpeter 3y ago
  [dead]
• dingusdew 3y ago
  It's not enough to just base this on screens. It's also workplace environments. Even something as "simple" as working in a pizza place, say Domino's, is increasingly a frantic assembly line where orders can come at a breakneck pace through internet applications. You'll still be working somewhere perpetually understaffed and who give you basically no training, but expect you to pay attention to multiple threads at once, all day long. You're a delivery driver, but you're also expected to do kitchen prep, take phone orders, take in-person orders, do dishes, cut and box pizzas, help on the prep line and generally be on-call for anything else needed to be done in the store. When your workflow is literally constantly being interrupted by other parts of the workflow, because you're always expected to be paying attention to multiple parts of the workflow, you lose the ability to focus on just one thing for an extended period. Anyway, that's my two cents, it's not just social media, phones and screens. It's also a way of life in America, to be expected to manage numerous expectations all at once and always be on your feet moving. If you can't do it, you're likely to lose your (shitty) job, so forcing yourself to be able to focus on numerous things at once without giving your whole focus to one thing is literally pounded into your head in your workplace.
  • asynchronous 3y ago
    I’d somewhat agree that culturally we just don’t value sustained single task work anymore. If you can’t multitask 15 things then you’re useless.
    • 31337Logic 3y ago
      ... even though the myth of multitasking had already been debunked many times over. I agree with you; It's a sad state of affairs.
    • gochi 3y ago
      Even financially we have decimated entire fields because they were single task.
  • yamazakiwi 3y ago
    Most jobs don't allow for deep focus or long-term thinking. How do we expect people to be good at it without practice while we encourage the opposite behavior.
  • chinchilla2020 3y ago
    Yep. I worked at a software shop where they liked for developers to have roughly 6 projects simultaneous at any time. The constant context-switching drove me insane. By the I time I 'loaded into mental RAM' all the context for one project, it was time for a meeting about another project. For an attention deficit programmer maybe this is a bonus. Not for me. I like to focus in on the task, take notes, figure it out, and get it out the door and off my plate. I don't like to nibble on code.
• marban 3y ago
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  • chikitabanana 3y ago
    I read the headline and opened the comments
  • anjel 3y ago
    Tl;Dr the internet is designed to interrupt your focus with ads and this rings your attention capacity in ways no one is ummmmmmm...
• cglong 3y ago
  I went to a theater to watch Mission: Impossible last night. It has a really long runtime (2h 48m) and, toward the end of the film, I started seeing multiple people pull out their phones for a time check; I had to stop myself from doing the same.
  • lotsofpulp 3y ago
    I think that has to do with excessively long movies and nothing to do with reduced attention spans. Very, very few action movies need to be more than 100min.
    • OfSanguineFire 3y ago
      > Very, very few action movies need to be more than 100min. I’ve read somewhere that blockbuster movies are trending longer at the moment, because people are ever less willing to pay the high prices for cinema tickets, drinks and snacks, so movie studios need to offer a really big experience to make it seem worthwhile.
      • morkalork 3y ago
        This is true but it's getting to be too much. I want to see Oppenheimer in theatres but 3 hours plus travel is just killing it for me.
        • europeanNyan 3y ago
          Don't forget the ads. They have gotten obnoxiously long. The last time I went, the ads for products and trailers went on for 45 minutes with an intermission so they can sell ice cream and snacks. I haven't been to the movies since.
          • mrweasel 3y ago
            Years ago I went with a friend to see Transformers. He is an absolute massive Transformers fan, so he insisted that we arrive no later than an hour before the movie would start. Me and my girlfriend meet up with him and a few other 90 minutes before, got our tickets, went for dinner and arrived about when the commercials ended and the trailers started. My friend was completely out of it, in his mind we missed part of the experience. I think he's the kind of customers the movies want. For me, I just get my ticket in advance and show up about 20 minutes late, seems to work out fine.
• hifromLA 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • asynchronous 3y ago
    Was gonna ask for a TLDR
    • kator 3y ago
      just cut-paste in ChatGPT.. why bother reading it..
      • coding123 3y ago
        can you provide a summa
      • cglong 3y ago
        I just tried that; ChatGPT agrees with this thread :D > The message you submitted was too long, please reload the conversation and submit something shorter.
• f3d2023 3y ago
  [flagged]
• tamimio 3y ago
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  • 7moritz7 3y ago
    I'm calling it: in 5 years mails will be read in bullet point summaries based on the actual formal email which the sender has an AI write from quick notes.
• bizzleDawg 3y ago
  I may be reading this incorrectly, but in the article, the 65% appears to be authors confidence in the statement that attention spans appear to be declining, as denoted by the sub-script. Whereas in the HN title it reads as if it's saying a "65% decline in attention span". Various other assertions in the post also have sub-script confidences associated e.g. "my guess: yes90%". I could totally believe that there has been a 65% decline in attention span. "Stolen Focus" by Johann Hari certainly makes 65% seem conservative!
  • ceejayoz 3y ago
    > Whereas in the HN title it reads as if it's saying a "65% decline in attention span". Perhaps the submitter's attention span ran out.
    • notahacker 3y ago
      For related reasons, I like the blog's claim that much of the difficulty in establishing whether the proposition is true or not is because none of the wealth of literature on attention span was in the form of long term studies. Perhaps the researchers got bored and moved on to something else!
      • civilitty 3y ago
        [flagged]
    • fikama 3y ago
      I know that HN is maybe not a place for such comments, but I strongly belive we need to make "attention span overflow" a thing
      • n0on3 3y ago
        (I'm not sure if you were joking or not and I know it's probably not in the same spirit you intended it here / a bit OT but...) I've been using literally that exact expression for a while to describe the situation in which, during somewhat complex discussions within a group, in order to not be perceived as jerks participants are forced to follow an unnecessarily long, repetitive, trivial and most often also completely pointless "line of reasoning" just to have their own attention completely derailed from any productive/actually-interesting argument anyone was trying to make, often ultimately resulting in giving up because recalling those lost mental threads is by then even more difficult and there is only so much mental energy (for you and collectively) to dedicate to that discussion. Just saying, imho it's already a thing (with different incarnations in different contexts).
• skilled 3y ago
  People hack themselves to find the quickest release of feel-good chemicals in their brain but most do it at the expense of not realizing that it numbs their entire existence. And now it’s more prevalent than it ever has been. Grabbing a phone is a nice way to stay in the shell that you have built around yourself and pretend like you have control over your life, but no one has control over their lives. The more you build walls of ideas around yourself the easier it becomes to make you discombobulated with the slightest gust of wind. It’s honestly pathetic we live this way and continue pretending it’s normal and that’s how it should be.
  • disadvantage 3y ago
    > The more you build walls of ideas around yourself the easier it becomes to make you discombobulated with the slightest gust of wind. Resilience can be cultivated with practice. The more you enter caves you don't want to enter, the more treasure you find.
    • skilled 3y ago
      Exactly. And sometimes you will enter a cave that is so full of terror it might knock you out for a while, but there are two things to this: 1) you actually made it that far. Life doesn’t treat you like shit when you are trying, it simply ups the ante and then you see how far you can go. 2) you now have an opportunity to learn from yourself. How did you end up in this place and how bad was it really? How would you feel about going back and how would you approach the situation this time? And the treasure you find is wisdom that you can then pass onto other people, particularly those close to you. I have been fortunate to meet people who have had a lot of experience with this but I consider myself an absolute apprentice even if I have dared to take a few big leaps.
  • basisword 3y ago
    >> Grabbing a phone is a nice way to stay in the shell that you have built around yourself and pretend like you have control over your life, but no one has control over their lives. Probably a major cause of the increased levels of anxiety younger generations have. Simple things like blocking out the world with headphones, or standing in line engrossed in your phone reduce the likelihood of somebody interacting with you in a way you don't control. Avoidance breeds anxiety.
• seee-I-Told-you 3y ago
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• deleted 3y ago
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• deleted 3y ago
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• jjoonathan 3y ago
  There is far more content than there used to be but no more hours in the day. Our filters must reject more. Yes, there are costs -- deep work & study both suffer -- but there are benefits too: informational content that can be compressed does get compressed. An introduction to a concrete skill that would at one time have been padded out to fit into an hour long movie or lecture might become a 30 minute youtube video and then a 30 second tiktok, by which point it has become a snap cut between the critical actions and finger-wag followed by pitfalls. You can look it up, watch it multiple times until it's committed to memory, and you don't have to spend hours torturing yourself with irrelevant tangents and nonsense. This is an astonishingly compact form of communication and it's beautiful to see.
  • Brusco_RF 3y ago
    I appreciate your optimism. A lot of people point out that education hasn't changed meaningfully in hundreds of years. Professors, long lectures, textbook readings, homework and exams. I am curious if this trend will be the catalyst for a new education systems to topple current status quo. You're right: the sum total of human knowledge is larger than it has ever been so to reach the boundaries of our understanding requires more learning than ever. Compressing that learning process therefore seems necessary to continue our upward trajectory. I'm both excited and terrified to see what a "TikTok-ified" engineering curriculum would look like.
    • Karrot_Kream 3y ago
      > I'm both excited and terrified to see what a "TikTok-ified" engineering curriculum would look like. That's what it already is, isn't it? It's not like Galileo could just read a small description on the Universal Law of Gravitation and understand what was going on. Think about explaining solving a linear system of equations vs using a matrix inverse to calculate a solution. As phenomena become better understood, we literally condense disparate observations into more general rules and theories that offer us more clarity and understanding. I like to follow a bunch of woodworkers on TikTok and once the algorithm gives you the right set of people, you can use the quick videos of how they setup jigs or some interesting joinery they do and riff off it in your own work. Sure if I were a beginner it would be different, but it's a very useful resource for someone with experience.
• disadvantage 3y ago
  > In 2004, in our earliest study, we found that people averaged about one hundred fifty seconds (two and a half minutes) on a computer screen before switching their attention to another screen Maybe it's just me, but I look at several different screens each day (Phone, Workstation, Raspberry Pi for home network logging using Pi-Hole, and a tablet). Not to mention our main TV. This is all normal for people these days. One screen for everything doesn't cut it, unless you are very disciplined and force yourself to use one device for everything, but I don't see the main purpose of that. Maybe if you're running a business with tricky logistics, you need to be pinned to a single device and need real-time interaction with your systems to get things done?
• HatchedLake721 3y ago
  I like the theory that the reason attention span has declined is because the demand for quality has hugely increased. Since there are so many blogs, films, books and videos out there, we no longer want to waste time on things that don't entertain or provide value to us. If in the past you might've given in and read or watched through boring parts because there was less options available, now people demand less B.S. and instant value. Because if you don't provide that, there's someone else a click away who will.
  • fragmede 3y ago
    Lord of the Rings. An absolutely genre-defining work, but if you read it, it's really friggin slow and not at all compatible with today's attention spans. It's not a demand for quality, it's a demand to be endlessly entertained without having to invest the time or have the patience to wait for a backstory to unfold. Which is fine, I'm opening my phone to doom scroll for a second too, I just don't think it's quality that's being sought-after, but instant-gratification dopamine-inducting entertainment. It's bad. Until I took the time to retrain my. brain, I couldn't read books because I didn't have the attention span for them.
    • eastof 3y ago
      Any tips for this retraining?
      • wizzwizz4 3y ago
        Don't rush to retrain yourself: consider whether things are enjoyable, or just engaging, and give it time.
      • JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y ago
        Not GP here, but I've gone through a similar brain reset exercise recently. There's no good way to do it, because it's essentially just dopamine deprivation. Caffeine withdrawal, internet withdrawal, gaming withdrawal - whatever stimulus you're using, you take it away and suffer for a while. Quitting my corporate gig has also been massively helpful - our big tech overlords were committing Guantanamo level atrocities on our minds via Slack overload, and I will never return to that kind of environment. I'm barely exaggerating. If you're a podcast kind of learner, Huberman has an episode on this "dopamine fasting" concept.
• carabiner 3y ago
  Trying to read classic literature really makes this apparent. Hemingway's Sun Also Rises must have been a riveting adventure story when it was published in 1926, but how can it compete with 10,000 hours of adventure travel on youtube, netflix etc.? Same with Moby Dick in 1850s... these were glimpses into exotic lives rarely heard of back then, but today you can find those stories or similar in vivid moving pictures and audio everywhere, in much more digestible forms. I really wish I could appreciate these great human achievements in the arts, but at least for books, I don't think my tech-atrophied brain has the ability.
  • esafak 3y ago
    So don't read those ones. Read books about things that can't be replicated by video, like Joyce's wordplay. It's like how photography liberates painting from realism. And I fully empathize with your difficulty in appreciating such works of fiction. Maybe I ought to try reading one this summer myself...
  • izzydata 3y ago
    I'd like to believe it is reversible. It's not a genetic problem so it is a problem of environment. If you tech detoxed for a whole year living in the woods or something then tried to read Moby Dick it would likely be very tolerable again. You could study some people who have gone to prison and have little opportunity for endless media consumption.
    • Brusco_RF 3y ago
      I think the spirit of the above comment questions whether it's even worth reversing
    • EatingWithForks 3y ago
      Moby Dick was never meant to be read how it is read now. It was originally a serial, so like a webcomic or a fanfic that's actively being worked on. Those are still very popular mediums of media.
      • deleted 3y ago
• svnt 3y ago
  The data by age show a consistent decline in attention: 34 to 55 year-olds were significantly lower than either 18 to 34 or 55+ This is interesting because it fits with none of the hypotheses and none is suggested. What could it be? To me it suggests that working and/or raising children have negative impacts on attention span.
• praveen9920 3y ago
  I saw “attention” and thought LLMs and realised that it is about people. Attention of machines been increasing while people’s attention span is decreasing.
• mrweasel 3y ago
  Soooo how to we get it back?
  • esafak 3y ago
    Curb usage of attention-seeking technologies. Shift your habits. Start by acknowledging the problem and its sources. Distance yourself from them psychologically, then physically.
  • BizarreByte 3y ago
    You give up looking at screens in your free time, that's the only real answer. It's sucks, it's hard, and I've had no success at it, but that seems to be the key.
  • Brusco_RF 3y ago
    Recognize that your most focused mindstate is first thing in the morning. Do tasks that require the longest attention span right then. Don't turn your phone on until they're done. Generally don't keep your phone in your pocket, put it in another room on silent. Disable lockscreen notifications for all apps but the essentials. Do the same to your computer. No screen time 2 hours before bed. Do long cardio workouts outside. Recognize that it's OK to be bored, you don't need to fill every gap by looking at your phone. It's OK just to let your mind wander around.
  • chasd00 3y ago
    You just pay attention longer. It takes effort but that's all you really need to do. For example, go observe and pay attention to a plant for 45min. Think of it like a workout, it's uncomfortable and a PITA but that's all there is to it.
• slmjkdbtl 3y ago
  my attention span is extremely short, can't even sit through a 5s short video, but I think it benefited my ability to improvise music (which is the only thing i care about now), it forces me to jump from ideas to ideas keys to keys quickly and kinda formed my style.
• sixQuarks 3y ago
  My attention span is too low to read the article. Can someone summarize it?
  • doublerabbit 3y ago
    I would, but laziness is on the increase and it's too much effort to type.
    • sixQuarks 3y ago
      I was going to write a comment trying to motivate you to not be lazy, but procrastination is also up and I’ll just do it later.
  • jgtrosh 3y ago
    The author tries to find specific evidence to answer whether individual people overall had their attention span reduced, in the time period where internet + social media became widespread. They go to some effort to define terms and review existing literature. They do not end up with a specific way to test for attention span, and they do not find definitive answers in existing literature. However, every thing, even if somewhat flawed, points to some forms of reduced attention spans. More interestingly, each element of the question is kinda questioned and widened during the article (“is there such a thing as attention span?”, “is each measure of shorter time spent on an activity actually a measure of shorter attention span?”) Imo what the intro touches on but fails to be explored in sufficient detail is what role gratification plays. I think so much time is spent on quantifying existing results, that when trying to design a good new test not enough time is spent applying game theory. I feel like there could be some good ways to properly quantify the link between gratification and attention, but I don't have the game theory / psychology bagage to go any further.
    • sixQuarks 3y ago
      Can someone summarize the above comment, attention span still too low to digest in one go
• commandlinefan 3y ago
  I feel like my own attention span has declined quite a bit, but I notice that younger people (including my kids) turn to Youtube for education - I've _never_ had an attention span that would allow me to sit through, say, a video programming tutorial (dear God, give me a book), but it seems to be the preferred approach for the next generation.
  • BbzzbB 3y ago
    I don't know that it's much of a positive tho, basically going from active to passive learning. Sitting through videos instead of reading books (much more efficient too IMO) seems like a prime example of attention span erosion to me.
    • asdff 3y ago
      And on top of that they aren't realizing any of the gain of the modern technology here. They buy a $1000 laptop, with $100 a month internet plan, to go watch a 15 minute youtube video with 4 minutes of discrete ads and 4 minutes of sponsor product mentions cut into the actual video, all to gleam a fraction of the understanding that a single page of whatever someone in their position a few decades ago would have checked out for free from the library. Whats all of this effort and technology even for then? The only people who eek out a gain here are the advertisers who now have put themselves front and center of what used to be an entirely unmonetized trip to the library, a known good source of truth.
      • commandlinefan 3y ago
        > would have checked from the library Well, local libraries don't really have that much in the way of good academic texts - you have to have access to a university library, or be willing to fork over $60 of your own for a print copy, for that. But I get what you mean.
        • asdff 3y ago
          You aren't getting anything from a youtube video thats in academic texts either. But you can certainly get academic textbooks from library systems. Are they on the shelf at your local library branch? Maybe not. Can you order it from the library system for free and get it sent to that branch in a few days? Sure. I just looked online at what one of the seminal works for a field I don't understand but might be generally useful to homeowners or people seeking to upskill: carpentry. I found the title "Building Construction Illustrated" recommended a few times. My library system has just about every edition of this book published over the decades, in good supply, even in ebook form. This is what I mean with how the library system can easily serve you very high quality information on a variety of topics.
• PeterCorless 3y ago
  Lowered attention spans may be widely regarded as a net negative, yet I propose to reframe the conversation: • Call it "whiffreading" after the term in the Book of the Subgenius [1983]. A way to intuitively, instinctively and logically determine if you can get the sense of something quickly. If you sense it is worthy, you will invest the time in it. If not, and you feel you are wasting time, you skip it. Quicker abandonments, glossing, and skipping ahead are all natural human adaptions to the increasing and constant bombardment of data and stimuli we are presented with. This is why we want the "tl;dr." This is why you want a 1-minute explainer video instead of a 30-minute or 1-hour lecture. Now, if you catch someone's attention, they'll follow you down the rabbit hole and will keep reading or watching. Maybe for hours. Look at TikTok lives and Twitch streamers. People doomscroll, next, next, next... but as soon as they encounter the right content — whabam! They will stick there until the livestream ends. Similarly, look at Hacker News itself. If a 1-sentence topic grabs your interest — whabam! You'll read the article (which could be thousands of words long) and you may engage in the threads of conversations, which could eat up your day. Oppositely if a content creator bores people or if the audience start to sense what you are talking about is sus, or totally outside their interests, they'll just drop it. A post on Hacker News will sink like a rock in the middle of a very deep ocean. Again, I propose this is an adaption to the environment. Time is speeding up. The onslaught of content trying to grab your attention is relentless. So this is the natural result.
  • cloudripper 3y ago
    I agree. I would also position that for some, it may be less a case of 'attention deficit' and more 'attention prudent'. There is way too much garbage content out there and information overload can easily lead to processing overload. Not speaking to the very real medical conditions out there but to societal generalizations - I place a very high personal value on my time and have little tolerance for wasting it on content I feel is uninspired and/or lacking depth or any sense of meaning to me. Then there is the issue of there being a high quantity of such damn good quality content out there (curses, HN). In that case, its just too much to ingest while working to maintain other forms of focus in life.
• crooked-v 3y ago
  I immediately think of the immediate and endless marketing spam notifications that are a result of daring to allow an app like Uber to send push notifications at all.
• psychlops 3y ago
  By what percent?
• HlessClaudesman 3y ago
  TLDR.
• dubcanada 3y ago
  I guess the question is not has attention spans declined, I think pretty much everyone can say yes. I suppose the question is, does it matter?
  • wheelerof4te 3y ago
    That heavily depends on the context. Is your child having difficulty staying alert in the classroom? Then the answer is yes. Are you having difficulty understanding a bestseller book? No worries there, just watch a movie or something.
    • dubcanada 3y ago
      Do you think children should be in a classroom? I tend to believe that children should be outside personally, with very little indoor activity. Even if it's snowing. I learned way more by doing my own thing, what ever that is, then I ever did stuck inside of a class room having a teacher read word for word from a textbook. I think there are varieties in the aspect of learning to be considered, some don't learn the same way of others. And that should be considered as well. But generally I don't think attention spans have anything to do with classroom. People were not paying attention in classrooms WAY before cell phones were invented. The problem is the "room" part of a classroom in my opinion. Reading I do agree with though.
      • wheelerof4te 3y ago
        "I learned way more by doing my own thing, what ever that is, then I ever did stuck inside of a class room having a teacher read word for word from a textbook." And I learned a lot more by reading stuff from Wikipedia on my own pace than I learned reading textbooks. So, good point.
  • fredoliveira 3y ago
    Most people require focus to come up with better ideas, so even in that narrow sense, I would argue that it matters a whole lot.
  • 3y ago
• qwertox 3y ago
  My biggest problem with attention span is my eyesight. It has been deteriorating badly from myopia to having an added farsightedness, so that there is only a small range where I see clearly with or without my glasses. I can't motivate myself to get new glasses with progressive lenses because apparently they bring their own new problems.
• kristjank 3y ago
  I feel increasing frustration every time I see a graph with a clear upward trend being waved off as "probably just better awareness". I am even more frustrated when it's a graph tracking some mental health issue. If adult ADHD numbers have doubled, that should mean something.
  • Capricorn2481 3y ago
    That's all well and good, but it's a plain ol' fact that it could all be from increased awareness. If someone is saying "no, it's too significant a change to be just awareness," it's kind of a nothing statement. What's the point of bringing awareness to undiagnosed mental health issues if we brush off signs that it helps people get diagnosed as a WORSENING of mental health?
  • User23 3y ago
    Cynically, I'd say it means that if you want to make staff Adderall is going to give you a considerable advantage over the next guy, all else being equal. Anyone smart enough to be in the running for staff or higher is smart enough to google ADHD symptoms and present with them at a psychiatrist.
  • Eumenes 3y ago
    ADHD numbers have doubled because people like drugs that make them productive, and the victimhood points you get for being "neurodivergent" ... aka, its all fake.
    • gochi 3y ago
      This idea that people are getting drugs to acquire victimhood points is so detached from reality, I am pleading with you, please spend less time on social media. It is not healthy and is changing your entire worldview. Your first swing at a reason doesn't make any sense either, as ADHD numbers have not solely affected adults. Even if you account for those "just wanting to be productive" by apparently ruining their entire ability to compensate dopamine naturally, the numbers are still increasing.
• partiallypro 3y ago
  I find it incredibly difficult to focus on movies while at home, I like being forced to not use my phone, etc by being in a theatre. I think this applies to most things; I don't know if attention has been declining so much as there are so many other things you can do at the same time which limits your attention.
• Aaronstotle 3y ago
  I know my attention span has declined, whats difficult for me is I work in an IT role so its very interrupt driven, happens through tickets or direct messages. (Got a slack message while writing this message!) One of my favorite things about cycling is it forces me to stay focused while I'm on the bike, I can't look at my phone or do something else.
  • bamfly 3y ago
    My pet-hypothesis is that part of the problem isn't the tech per se, but that office workers do parts of jobs that would have been the specialty of several different people before, say, the 1980s. And not only that: they switch between those, and aspects of their own job, much faster than before. A person who had two kinds of tasks to worry about in a given day in 1975, might have twenty today—technology didn't so much eliminate work, as allow it to be more concentrated. Someone's still doing the work, it's just five people instead of twenty-five, and none of them as is focused or specialized as before. Everyone's a secretary now, in other words—plus whatever else they do. Everyone is the mail room. Little bits of jobs like project management or plain ol' management get devolved down to ordinary workers. And so on.
    • User23 3y ago
      Yes that's what "productivity gains" look like.
• blueblimp 3y ago
  For those who aren't aware, this blog is infamous for sloppy work. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7iAABhWpcGeP5e6SB/it-s-probably-not-lithium https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7iAABhWpcGeP5e6SB/it-s-proba...
  • niplav 3y ago
    This is a submission to a [contest](https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2023/01/01/mysterious-mysteries-of-unsolved-mystery-call-for-entries/ https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2023/01/01/mysterious-mysterie...) SMTM are running, so the author is very likely not the normal authors of SMTM.
    • axiomaticdoubts 3y ago
      I still think it's important to note that the blog's work is shoddy. The fact that this blog post is #1 on HN means that multiple people will read SMTM's other blog posts, which contain several falsehoods that they've refused to fix. See, for example, this page https://manifold.markets/Natalia/how-many-of-these-falsemisleading-s https://manifold.markets/Natalia/how-many-of-these-falsemisl... for an incomplete list. I have been trying to get them to remove falsehoods from their blog for over one year, but it's impossible.
      • gruez 3y ago
        >The fact that this blog post is #1 on HN means that multiple people will read SMTM's other blog posts, which contain several falsehoods that they've refused to fix. That was prescient: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36854850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36854850
  • qt31415926 3y ago
    Thanks, didn't know. This article seems to have been written by a reader though so not the same authors of the sketchy lithium work
  • Zetice 3y ago
    [flagged]
• theoperagoer 3y ago
  ngl, I had to fight distraction to finish reading this article.
• sizzzzlerz 3y ago
  What? I was watching this squirrel outside.
• substation13 3y ago
  Anyone else read the headline and go straight through to the comments? I think that HN, which has added deliberate friction elsewhere on the site, should consider hiding the comments link until you have clicked through to the article.
• WaitWaitWha 3y ago
  Permit me to tie a couple of personal observation on this topic. I do not think we "lost" our ability. I think we changed our thinking. I think the world has mostly accepted the "good enough" versus "perfect". As we all have heard, to become an expert, on average we need to pursue the subject for 10 thousand hours (? Malcolm Gladwell). But, we do not need to spend 20 years practicing. We can obtain "good enough" in a few weeks, or even few hours (obviously depending on the subject). For example, to win the Grand Prix de la baguette de Tradition Française de la Ville de Paris (i.e., French Baguette Competition of Paris), many spend a lifetime perfecting their craft. I can teach you in a day how to make an edible baguette that the average consumer will enjoy. I think our "attention span" has shifted to "good enough" in many instances. I do not think this destroyed our attention span capability, it just made it slightly different. Final anecdote to "prove" my point we did not lose our attention. I have taken ADHD-diagnosed boys to camp and fish. Of the twelve (ages 12-16), only one could not sit patiently and watch the line and bobber for extended period. He became bored, and started whittling for the same amount of time. Once they returned to "civilization", they "became" ADHD again. As someone already noted, in my experience humans cannot multitask. We can context switch, some very slowly, and some very fast. But, we do not multitask.
  • Terr_ 3y ago
    > I think we changed our thinking. I think the world has mostly accepted the "good enough" versus "perfect". [...] For example, to win [a famous baguette competition] many spend a lifetime perfecting their craft. Hasn't it always been that way, though? Decades or centuries ago we've been doing things (e.g. breadmaking) with fewer resources and worse tools and tighter margins, so "good enough" was probably even more important, rather than less. Great works were often made despite those limits, rather than in concert with them. Surely the techniques and investments used in competition are not the same ones that baker would use to feed a large hungry crowd. "Perfect" probably only showed up either (A) where that's just the next frontier for a successful professional to stay engaged in their craft or promote their brand and (B) products commissioned by figurative if not literal royalty.
    • kshacker 3y ago
• agumonkey 3y ago
  I know I really need books now so my brain can cut off and dive into a slower timespace.
• donbatman 3y ago
  Boring...
• reacharavindh 3y ago
  I think it is related but not the same - instant gratification is what leads to our brains to shorten the attention span. I could see it happen to me in the last few years. I sort of stagnated in almost every endeavor because I was picking low hanging fruits if you will and did only the things that I could easily see the end result for… Until I started training for a half marathon. Not having run seriously in my life, I challenged myself to join my friends for a 10K last year. The training was an unexpected lesson in humility and thought - I could not go for the 10K regardless of how motivated or pumped up I was. I needed to train myself to get there properly… 2 KM on day 1, 5KM by day 15, and 10K by day 30 or so. With enough rest in between. I could do the 10K last year happily. This year I am training for the 21K. I’m practicing for 3 months slowly improving my pace and endurance. I’m not what one would call athletic. I’m still doing it and it makes me incredibly happy. The analogy I went for is - the same applies to learning anything new, or mastering something- it takes time, and continuous effort. Not instant gratification. It sounds very logical and simple in hindsight, but I had to learn it as an adult now.
• croes 3y ago
  No TL;DR?
• EGreg 3y ago
  In other news — it appears that the attention spans of goldfish have been increasing! (Relative to humans that is :) https://time.com/3858309/attention-spans-goldfish/ https://time.com/3858309/attention-spans-goldfish/ BUT: https://www.forbes.com/sites/shanesnow/2023/01/16/science-shows-humans-have-massive-capacity-for-sustained-attention-and-storytelling-unlocks-it/?sh=3ae323821a38 https://www.forbes.com/sites/shanesnow/2023/01/16/science-sh...
• Joel_Mckay 3y ago
  TLDR
• neilv 3y ago
  I'd guess that the shocking "Yes, 65%" in the HN title is what catapulted it into the #1 front page spot -- but that bit isn't currently in the title on TFA (nor in the 2 archive.org captures).
• chiefalchemist 3y ago
  I listened to this podcast over the weekend on NPR's "How I Build This" (tho it's from early to mid 2022). It's an interview with Johann Hari, the author of "Stolen Focus". The book sounds like it's worth a go, even at close to 400 pages!??!? https://wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this/episode/10386-hibt-lab-stolen-focus-johann-hari/ https://wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this/episode/10386-hib... https://stolenfocusbook.com/ https://stolenfocusbook.com/
• mehlmao 3y ago
  Love people implying their beliefs are empirical by arbitrarily assigning percentage values.
  • jgtrosh 3y ago
    I think this is just an unusual attempt to formulate their guesses more precisely without relying on linguistics. You could see it as somewhat earnest, as in they can be shown to wrong to a certain extent, and can't try to weasel out of their specific claims. In this kind of meta study without a quantitative result, I think it conveys the intention rather well.
• adnmcq999 3y ago
  Someone get this author a grammarly subscription
  • secondo 3y ago
    I found it quite well-written. Why so?
• nologic01 3y ago
  We need to distinguish attention span as an inate ability from our time allocation patterns (where we exercise our agency). Did an elaborate psychological experiment recently (n=1) and was happily surprised that i am still able to read a book cover to cover, no problem :-) But "finding the time" to do so (i.e prioritising such an experience) is another matter altogether.
• acqbu 3y ago
  Definitely! Mine is so bad that I didn't even read the full article. After half a paragraph I went back scrolling through TikTok.
• noduerme 3y ago
  I don't know if they have or not, but I just spent the last few minutes reading about the neologism ephebiphobia and feeling vaguely annoyed by the assumptions and general tone of the wikipedia article. Now I'm closing this tab and going to get a burrito.
• dottjt 3y ago
  I'm surprised no one here has mentioned mindfulness (is briefly mentioned in the article). It pretty much solves this problem. But I guess that's part of the issue, is that the problem directly obfuscates the solution, so the problem remains prevalent.
  • fuzztester 3y ago
    I posted this after reading your comment: Ask HN: Do you meditate? How? Results? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36854244 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36854244
  • cratermoon 3y ago
    There's also the problem that "mindfulness" is itself obfuscated to mean something specific about autonomy, individual power, and personal freedom. This is a problem because it assumes attention occurs within a fixed cultural and economic framework as an individual commodity that can be traded. It's very transactional. The practice of attention beyond what the mindfulness movement has co-opted includes attention to the ethical and ontological structure underlying our experiences. It is subversive in the sense that deep attention requires questioning assumptions. That's something the purveyors of distractions would prefer to discourage.
    • dottjt 3y ago
      I don't personally see that. What you're saying to me, feels like an interpretation of what you think mindfulness is. Which is perfectly valid, it's just I've never personally associated mindfulness with any of the things you describe.
      • cratermoon 3y ago
        > I've never personally associated mindfulness with any of the things you describe What is mindfulness, to you? What sorts of practices and contexts do you experience as mindfulness?
        • 3y ago
• robertlagrant 3y ago
  Does anyone have a tl;dr?
• waymon 3y ago
  that was a long article
• iharhajster 3y ago
  Why is attention span even so important? At a survival mechanism level, shouldn't imediate threat priority assignment be more of value long term than attention span? Since we spend less time focusing on one thing now, maybe our survival performance as a species increased. What am I missing?
• retrocryptid 3y ago
  I'm sorry, what were you saying?
• FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  wait, wut? wut was this about again? dude, like you just checked out, lol.
• tamaharbor 3y ago
  What?
• devmor 3y ago
  This is entirely anecdotal, and as I have ADHD this may not be the norm; but I have noticed throughout my life so far that my attention span is a product of what I pay attention to. If I am primarily consuming content to enrich myself or critically analyze something, my attention span tends to be longer for a period of time. Conversely, if I am consuming content to socialize or out of boredom, my attention span shortens significantly. In both cases, there seems to be a “cooldown period” of at least several days before my attention span reverts to somewhere in the middle. I wonder if others share in this phenomenon and how common it is.
  • ImaCake 3y ago
    Yeah I, subjectively, have experienced the same. But with the same caveat about having ADHD. What I find more substantial is my stress level correlates with what media I consume. Books, long form writing, or even just any text medium (as opposed to video) tend to be more relaxing and allow me to focus better. I wonder if stress is the causal mechanism for focus here? Maybe not entirely but a proportion of it. I think speculation is allowed here since the author was unable to draw substantial conclusions either. But did distill a lot of useful information together.
• pier25 3y ago
  I've noticed that I rarely properly read anything online anymore. 90% of the time I'm just scanning or skimming. I do focus on stuff for extended periods of time like watching a movie, reading a book, working on something, etc.
  • cubefox 3y ago
    > I do focus on stuff for extended periods of time like watching a movie, reading a book, working on something, etc. Note that watching a movie requires far less attention than reading a book. Movies, first, are compressed stories (movie scripts are less than a hundred pages) where, second, nothing is left to the imagination. I'd bet that people read much fewer books today than before video streaming became popular, or before TV went mainstream. (I do rarely watch movies, but I mostly stopped reading books since I bought a smartphone.)
    • pier25 3y ago
      > I mostly stopped reading books since I bought a smartphone Before smartphones I read voraciously and then around 2010 I kinda stopped. Not technical books (which I still read when the need arises) but novels. At the start of the pandemic I got a Kindle and since then I've gotten back into the habit of reading fiction. I read at least 1 hour every day.
      • cubefox 3y ago
        Yeah an e-book is better than reading on a tablet or smartphone, since the limited OS means there are less distractions. But for me, there mere existence of a smartphone in my pockets triggers my Web addiction.
• napierzaza 3y ago
  [dead]
• anotherevan 3y ago
  TL;DR?
• constantly 3y ago
  Whew! I saw the original title about attention spans declining by 65% and was worried, but now I see the updated title and consistent with Betteridge’s Rule can be confident they have not been actually declining. Thankfully I don’t have to read the article as it seems long.
• neaumusic 3y ago
  lmfao, writing 10+ pages about attention span seems ironic
• nobody9999 3y ago
  tl;dr. Edit: Okay. That was a "low effort" response. So I'll expand. That we even have such an abbreviation makes me think that maybe (contrary to Betteridge's Law[0]) the author of TFA might be on to something. With so many different things fighting for your attention, it can be difficult to stay focused. It takes practice and discipline to shut out other things and maintain your focus on something. I don't claim to be expert in doing so, but I do try -- and fail some of the time. I believe that maintaining focus/attention is a learned skill. One that isn't considered important to acquire/teach. Once upon a time, there were fewer immediate distractions which enabled (forced?) us to focus our attention for extended periods. Nowadays, there are so many things fighting for our attention that it's more difficult to learn that skill. Is that good or bad? I suppose that depends on your point of view. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline... Edit 2: Added the missing link.
• ultrablack 3y ago
  "So—why hasn’t anyone investigated this question to satisfaction yet?" Would take too long.
• avodonosov 3y ago
  Yes
• Modified3019 3y ago
  I also highly recommend at least the first few of the Chemical Hunger series as well: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/tag/a-chemical-hunger/ https://slimemoldtimemold.com/tag/a-chemical-hunger/ While not without it’s problems (which is to be expected considering the impossibly complex subject matter), It does a fantastic job detailing how the obesity epidemic is not some kind of oversimplified moral sin issue where we all suddenly became gluttonous (“just eat less!”) and slothful (“just do more”). The major thing I find lacking is the omission of just how much the many different types of fatty and amino acids also act as major chemical signals that ultimately[0] affect whether your body tries to burn energy “wastefully” for heat, or tries to store it. The articles leans toward environmental chemicals as being the primary effectors subtly acting on our metabolism, but the very food we eat is itself a massive load of chemicals with complex effects that we can’t ignore. [0] The next time someone wanting to feel clever and smug about it says “calories in, calories out” or “muh thermodynamics”, send them this: http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1 http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1
  • axiomaticdoubts 3y ago
    Those posts have grave errors, which the authors have been made aware of long ago but have refused to fix. For example, they literally made up the claim that wild animals have been getting more obese (there is no evidence of that). See this post I wrote for more details: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NRrbJJWnaSorrqvtZ/on-not-getting-contaminated-by-the-wrong-obesity-ideas https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NRrbJJWnaSorrqvtZ/on-not-get...
• jacobsenscott 3y ago
  IDK. There was no tl;dr, and copy/pasting to chatgtp for a summary is too much work on a page that long. I guess I'll never know.
• ldehaan 3y ago
  [dead]
• 10g1k 3y ago
  I really don't... Hey, what's that...?
• sanity 3y ago
  tl;dr?
• Sujeto 3y ago
  I think I just know what the thing is going to be about. I just need to read a headline. If I think there's more to it I force myself to read a bit. Something that comes with repeating patterns over and over again for decades.
• transcoderx 3y ago
  [dead]
• dumpsterdiver 3y ago
  Another commenter mentioned that modern humans are exposed to more content, and necessarily we must apply filters. I would go further to suggest that not only is there more content, but that content is expressed in a manner intended to only consume a brief amount of attention. Typically, such content is also presented in a way that encourages the user to continue providing their attention, except that their attention is directed to new content. And so while it may be argued that the person "is still paying attention", the rules of attention are simply different when engaging with such content. To be clear, I find such touch-and-go content to be generally reprehensible. It lacks nuance, and leaves little room for intelligent discourse. I am simply pointing out that it's very possible that humans are just as capable as they've always been, and it is simply the medium that has changed.
  • janalsncm 3y ago
    I find a lot of content online (videos and blogs) as well as offline (various books) are too long to the point of being disrespectful of my time. If you’re writing a blog and incentivized to stuff in as many SEO terms as possible, you will do so at the expense of my time and irritation. If you need to make a 10 minute video but really only have 2 minutes of content, you value those 8 minutes of my life at zero and unless I do to, I’m skipping through the filler. Same thing with books. If your book contains one central argument, respect your reader enough to cut out the fat. I don’t need a comprehensive history of the subject if your argument can boil down to a few paragraphs.
    • jesterson 3y ago
      > Same thing with books. If your book contains one central argument, respect your reader enough to cut out the fat. I don’t need a comprehensive history of the subject if your argument can boil down to a few paragraphs. I tend to politely disagree with that. In most cases "comprehensive history of the subject" is important to understand the subject fully and, most importantly, reasons for the argument. Currently we have endemic of people who suggest doing thing in particular way, but when you question reasoning, there will be no answer. It's picking up ideas here and there without understanding of premises, and it's very dangerous because idea without premises is likely inapplicable to slightly changed premises.
• toomim 3y ago
  My PhD thesis produced an instrument for measuring attention span: https://invisible.college/attention/dissertation.html https://invisible.college/attention/dissertation.html It is a lot like the author theorized— it uses Mechanical Turk to measure how long people will attend to a task given an incentive. Anyone interested should be sure to check out this survival graph, that depicts the length of time people will attend to a task, given characteristics of the task and the value of the goal they are trying to achieve: https://invisible.college/attention/dissertation/survival.png https://invisible.college/attention/dissertation/survival.pn...
  • amelius 3y ago
    I would personally place a non focusable window on top of that annoying gif.
  • kaba0 3y ago
    Is there even a definition of attention span? I was under the impression that it is an ill-defined term in the first place: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-38896790.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/health-38896790.amp (Sorry, haven’t yet checked out your work)
• dingclancy 3y ago
  I guesss it is true. I scanned the article, and it was too long for me to read =)
• nunez 3y ago
  This article was incredibly interesting to me given the chain of events that have unfolded at Reddit. I used to be a hardcore Reddit user. On the site daily for ten years or so. While I didn't spend hours on the site per day (though there were some days where I definitely did), I _had_ to visit it every day or I would be irritable. Note that I felt like this despite unsubscribing to every subreddit in favor of multireddits (so that my front page would be empty), not enabling notifications on the site, disabling infinite scroll and having a very limited set of subs in my multis, few of which I'd consider classic time-wasters (like /r/consulting, which is mostly consulting memes, or /r/programmerhumor). A problem with Reddit (for me) is that despite doing all of this, there is essentially infinite content, and all of it is interesting! Since I also browsed Hacker News, what ultimately happened was that I would speed-run HN and Reddit in an attempt to be "caught up" during the "limited free time" I had to myself. Like many here, I quit Reddit cold-turkey a month ago when Reddit committed to their new API pricing strategy and Christian committed to sunsetting Apollo. I figured that it was only a matter of time until Reddit sunsets old.reddit, I had no interest in being forced to use new.reddit, and all of the subs I cared about were (rightfully!) going dark and losing subscribers in the process. Since I browse Hacker News via skimfeed.com (excellent curator) and there are, at most, 15 posts on there at a time, I don't spend nearly as much time on "Internet things" as I did before. However, my tolerance for reading (and writing!) long form like this has gone way up! I think this is due to me not feeling as if I need to split my time as aggressively as I did before. I'm also much more chill about "needing" to browse daily. I still hit up HN every day, but because there is so little to catch up on, I feel like I got much more of my time back now. (One more thing. Reddit, by and large, rewards short, quippy, knee-jerk responses. Longform is typically skipped over. You don't have to think very much to use the site. Ironically, it is very easy to scroll through a Reddit thread while also feeling rushed to speed-run through it to get caught up. Very different from HN, where the content is very interesting, and longer comments tend to be upvoted more.)
• vacuity 3y ago
  Too long; didn't read.
• asdfman123 3y ago
  The answer has been staring us in the face: https://imgur.com/TAocWp4 https://imgur.com/TAocWp4
• DatDay 3y ago
  Too much accessible content, yet so little time.
• mikewarot 3y ago
  My attention span has grown. I've watched multiple hour interviews by a number of people on a variety of topics I've found interesting. My tolerance for narrative disguised as news has vanished. I stopped watching TV and mainstream news. I deliberately follow some people I strongly disagree with, to keep from falling into an echo chamber. Curate your sources, and it's a wonderful world. If you let the algorithm decide what you see, it controls you, eventually.
• blobbers 3y ago
  I love how in his estimate of the cost of the experiment he makes sure to highlight that we can pay the "researcher" $15/hr. Overall, interesting survey of literature. You should publish your meta study.
• blobbers 3y ago
  I'm curious what the shape of the distribution actually is in terms of attention span, and if there is skew. I used to spend hours and hours pouring over math problem sets. There isn't a 'tiktok'ed way to be good at solving linear signal problems by hand, as far as I can tell. It is simply a matter of focusing and practicing, being able to recognize patterns and take the appropriate steps. I'm not saying it was a useful skill to learn, but it was a difficult one to pick up, at least for me. While I do feel that my attention is often "pulled" by multiple things, when I am truly able to focus is when I have sole responsibility, rather than many conflicting things. In that sense, my attention is often drawn by multiple things.
• goddessoflists 3y ago
  I find this a very frustrating topic. I've studied psychology so I always feel compelled to look at the data first, but here I'm going to focus more on personal experience. For me, the short answer is: it depends. Somtimes, I do have a short attention span--I'll start watching a video but then also look at the comments and suggested videos at the same time. But if I find a truly interestng article or video, I will give it complete attention, even if it's a longform article or a half-hour documentary. I listen to hour-long lectures and podcasts. What I don't like about this entire phenomenon is that people saw attention spans were declining and then decided to create stuff that doesn't require much attention. I think instead of creating more short content, we should have made it scarce. People will consume what is available. There is much more short-form content available today than it was 5 years ago, because social media turned it into an advantage. We should have continued creating long-form content. People would have paid attention to it if that was the only thing available. I'd also partly blame the idea that you must be reading a lot, watching a lot, keep up with everything, and in general get more things done. So people turn to summaries and bullets, just to avoid being "left behind."
• mercurialsolo 3y ago
  Attention spans are an uber representation of something that is far more granular - complexity of task, context length, prior knowhow (affects complexity at a personal level), environmental noise. If our cognition is impacted by information, then by the very fact that attention span is a function of the information in our environment. I quite subscribe to the fact noisier environments lead to decline in attention spans.
• corn13read2 3y ago
  I couldn’t even read all the
• FreshStart 3y ago
  No, the brain is self optimizing for less calorie usage, thus the state of affairs is normal. The actor for the interests of all (democratic state) used to have the task to push everyone to their limits, for the benefit of all. Long for content is still around (e. g. https://www.lrb.co.uk/ https://www.lrb.co.uk/) but the ruined intellectual allmende is unable to parse it.
• corajoe 3y ago
  [dead]
• lionkor 3y ago
  > whether the introduction of the internet may be harmful to cognitive performance surely the positive benefits outweigh any loss of attention span, in terms of the entire internet as a technology?
• fargle 3y ago
  I think it's a definite possibility given a couple factors: - for one,
• bilekas 3y ago
  I remember reading a study about a year ago I've been trying for a while to find it and post here now but basically it was observing that people, specifically kids recently have had instant access to information that they needed and so when something was taking longer than expected to absorb the information it would be passed on for some faster method of absorbing the info. The jist of the study was that it wasn't so much attention spans are in decline but patience for consuming information. I am not that particular generation but for sure if I'm looking for some info recently i get frustrated if I don't get the info I'm looking for quick enough.
• lencastre 3y ago
  Yes.
• andyhex 3y ago
  TLDR: yes
• alex-olivier 3y ago
  tldr
• Mat3777 3y ago
  Are attention spans genetic?
• renegade-otter 3y ago
  Yes. Our brains have been rewired. We consume information in smaller bits - the brain can no longer focus on long-form content. I used to be able to read a chapter of a book - now I can't. That's NOT an accident, and I didn't somehow acquire ADHD at 40 (and I will argue that most people who are hogging Adderall right now didn't either).
  • crims0n 3y ago
    Yeah I recently started reading again in my adult life (highly recommended btw), and I had to retrain my brain to sit through the slow drip of information. First a page, then a couple, finally a chapter. One things that stood out to me is books are incredibly verbose. You wade through an ocean of verbiage on the given subject and saturate yourself with the knowledge - and in the end you come out far more of an expert than any internet perusing could allow.
• GnarfGnarf 3y ago
  This may be partly due to television. TV gets eyeballs by providing a constant stream of quick cuts that pander to the brain's addiction. See Neil Postman "Amusing ourselves to death".
• melicerte 3y ago
  Because of my declining span of attention and ADHD, I could not reach the end of the post...
  • sirsinsalot 3y ago
    My ADHD means I can't even fini
• pif 3y ago
  What was the question, again?
• teunispeters 3y ago
  I'd measure attention span by the length of time one can dedicate to a task one enjoys during the day. It would be entertaining maybe to compare high school automechanics programs over years, for instance, as one learning culture. Btw, I wouldn't be shocked if it found our attention spans are fine, what we're dealing with is environments that are getting harder and harder to do sustained activities within - because so many different demands on attention are going on all the time.