5 ms·

The flip side is that when people get used to consuming content in 30 second blipverts, they become unable to maintain attention through a 10 second break in th

by mlyle 3y ago

The flip side is that when people get used to consuming content in 30 second blipverts, they become unable to maintain attention through a 10 second break in the action. I don't know for sure about causation, but the students that I see incessantly consume tiktok completely lose state and working context in a very short time. It's a very strong correlation. (And, I disagree a bit with your premise: for those of us who have become literate at skimming directions, the 30 second tiktok is still slower and more context-switch heavy than we're accustomed to... also, the risk that the tiktok is just quickly presented snap-edited bullshit that we don't have time to adequately question is high). Developing some skills requires focus and careful study. We're robbing youth of the patience needed to conquer these skills.

rjzzleep 3y ago
TL;DR if we keep the direct environment of our child clean and limit distractions she's calm, and focused. If we don't she gets whiny and somewhat unbearable. I'm raising a child right now and it's pretty simple to observe a few simple patterns: 1. if there is stuff in her visible range during any activity that is even mildly interesting she wants it and it distracts from any activity. be it her own scooter, or her own toys lying around. denying her access to it makes her upset. 2. if there is any food in her visible range, cookies, fruits, anything, while eating dinner, she wants it and it makes feeding harder. denying access to it will make her upset and scream. 3. if there is a screen of any sort or a bright light on she will stare at it. denying her access to it makes her upset unless I turn it off and put my devices away. 4. We don't have a TV so she enjoys books a lot and we have improved our eating habits which makes it A LOT easier to feed her the same her healthy food. 5. Grand parents think they should bring a bunch of gifts every time they visit meaning our place is filled with junk, infinite amounts of clothes and they get upset when they don't get to gift it much like the kids that receive them. What I'm trying to say it that even taking away all the digital distractions, a lot of these simple things are things I and many people around me did not have in abundance as a child. It's not just because the digital stuff that attention spans decline. It's because EVERYTHING is noisy. Even the children books and toys are flashy and noisy. It's not like you wake up one day and have attention or not, it's something that is learned over long periods of time. How is any one supposed to grow up learning focus with all that junk around? I think a lot of these things are designed to get attention from children. The toy, book, and even children clothing manufacturers compete with each other on attention, ultimately I would argue with the goal of making the biggest profits.
- mlyle 3y ago
  Small kids struggle with focus, and here it's a good thing: they work to expand their environment and explore. And, yes, you're totally right: too many toys and other things seem to exist to exploit this in the name of keeping kids quiet for a couple of minutes and extracting money from guardians. Not to mention the excessive use of tablets and screen time for kids under 5. But I'm talking about something somewhat different: I know quite a few 17-19 year olds that genuinely want to absorb information, but literally cannot hold focus through a 15 second interruption. This is way more prevalent now than a few years ago, and it seems to be the students who are obsessed with short-form video that struggle the most. I think all the things you're mentioning are relevant, but the big thing is that with mobile devices and short-form content we've created an environment where distraction never lets up. Most of us had to learn to be bored during some of our summer and sit with the feeling: that opportunity doesn't really exist now for youth.
- DANmode 3y ago
  > TL;DR Too perfect.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  A "neat" thing is that this exact same behavior is present in adults. Numerous studies have demonstrated a negative impact on focus (and other factors) when a person's phone is in their vicinity, even if it's completely inactive. I'd hypothesize it's our bodies becoming somewhat acclimated to the little micro-dopamine bursts you're going to get each time you get a bzzt, brrt, beep, or other sort of "engagement" (read: addiction) optimized notifier letting you know that something has happened. Even just seeing your phone, your body just starts anticipating it, and waiting for its next hit - in the same way your mouth may begin to salivate when looking at a delicious plate of food. I suspect we'll look back at this era we're living in, the same way we might look back at the 19th century. In the 19th century cocaine started showing up in just about everything. It was used in medicinal tonics, casual drinks like Coca Cola (cocaine + kola nut), and more. People would use it recreationally, employers would give it to their workers, inventors and others (among them, Thomas Edison) would use it to improve their productivity, and more. Given the dramatic side effects of cocaine, people certainly realized there was a problem - but inertia is one hell of a beast.
wraptile 3y ago
> when people get used to consuming content in 30 second blipverts, they become unable to maintain attention through a 10 second break in the action. I keep hearing this but is there actual evidence? My anecdata is that I can watch tiktoks and read programming books all day without one impacting the other. I honestly have trouble believing that our attention mechanism is so flawed it can be broken so easily. I think the more likely explanation is that consumed content is just more efficient these days. In other words, it's not our attention span that's changing but our data culture. I think that's a good thing too.
- andirk 3y ago
  What kind of knowledge are all you getting from Tiktok? Technical knowledge? Philosophical? I thought the app was for lip syncing + lazy cheerleading and the occasional Chinese data mining. But I am perfectly happy hopping on the bandwagon if it has substance!
  - wraptile 3y ago
    It's a totally under rated platform imo - there are a lot of high quality creators! In particular I'm following UX (@designertom), CX and design channels as I'm still transitioning from backend to full stack development. Tech news, Producthunt-like content (especially in bleed edge areas like AI), art stuff, technical gardening (@transformativeadventures), science stuff (@hankgreen) and health/workout (@dr_idz). The initial problem with tiktok is that you need quite a bit of time to train the algorithm to actually give you the stuff you want as the search and other discovery areas are really bad on purpose. Also worth noting that Tiktok now supports long form content so some video can get pretty long. The player also has 2x video speed and good seeker so it's easy to roll through a lot of information very efficently!
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    I just use all the various sites as tools, instead of having loyalty anywhere. Search for something you're interested in and see what shows up. YouTube is definitely no longer the central repository of everything that it once was. A good way to demonstrate the average difference between YouTube and TikTok is to show the same video from the same guy, but optimized for different platforms. This is a video on deadlift form (in weight training): TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@jeremyethier/video/7198936808133020933 https://www.tiktok.com/@jeremyethier/video/71989368081330209... YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxWcirHIwVo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxWcirHIwVo No idea what the deal is, but I'm guessing the YouTube algorithm is optimized for longer form videos so a lot of stuff ends up with just a lot of filler. The TikTok video is everything in the YouTube video, but with all the fluff removed. I've also used TikTok for foreign language lessons with excellent results, largely for the same reason. The videos tend to have a lot better information density than what YouTube optimizes for. ---- Also, just watching that YouTube version again. Perhaps one of the best things is no more "If you like this video be sure to like, subscribe, and comment below. It really helps the channel out." An algorithm that relies on such a stupid, gameable, opt-in metric is always going to be inherently dysfunctional.
throwaway2037 3y ago
The flip side is that when people get used to consuming content in 30 second blipverts, they become unable to maintain attention through a 10 second break in the action. I see this written so frequently. Is there any studies to back up this claim? Please forgive me: Normally, I abhor the "citation please" type of response, but this claim is misleading to me. It just sounds like grumpy old person complaining about speed of the world and young(er) people. Example: I tried Googling for "does consuming short content make it harder to focus on longer content?". None of the content is scientific research, just a bunch of blowhards writing "it's never been worse" blog posts.
- hanselot 3y ago
  Well, I can't give you a neurological point of view on it, but if you train an LLM to be great at handling a context size of 512 tokens, when you try to ask it to do a task which requires greater context length (or in this context - attention span), the responses become incoherent, scattered and perplex as hell. Which I imagine to be what would happen to a human if they trained their brain to process information of a certain context length exclusively. So yeah, perhaps your brain becomes amazing at processing succinct information that's been engineered to be short, to the point and has none of the subtext or subtlety that you could include in a larger context. That being said, perhaps that's exactly the kind of mental capacity you need for high context switching professions, I'm not sure which those are yet, but I'm sure there has to be someone in the world that has a use for that.
- maroonblazer 3y ago
  > Is there any studies to back up this claim? Did you read TFA? It's the entire subject of the piece. One could analogize attention as a muscle. If you're only lifting 5KG dumbbells, you're not going to be able to lift 25KG.
  - anthlax 3y ago
    The articles conclusion is explicitly that there is no valuable literature on the subject

by mlyle 3y ago

rjzzleep 3y ago

TL;DR if we keep the direct environment of our child clean and limit distractions she's calm, and focused. If we don't she gets whiny and somewhat unbearable. I'm raising a child right now and it's pretty simple to observe a few simple patterns: 1. if there is stuff in her visible range during any activity that is even mildly interesting she wants it and it distracts from any activity. be it her own scooter, or her own toys lying around. denying her access to it makes her upset. 2. if there is any food in her visible range, cookies, fruits, anything, while eating dinner, she wants it and it makes feeding harder. denying access to it will make her upset and scream. 3. if there is a screen of any sort or a bright light on she will stare at it. denying her access to it makes her upset unless I turn it off and put my devices away. 4. We don't have a TV so she enjoys books a lot and we have improved our eating habits which makes it A LOT easier to feed her the same her healthy food. 5. Grand parents think they should bring a bunch of gifts every time they visit meaning our place is filled with junk, infinite amounts of clothes and they get upset when they don't get to gift it much like the kids that receive them. What I'm trying to say it that even taking away all the digital distractions, a lot of these simple things are things I and many people around me did not have in abundance as a child. It's not just because the digital stuff that attention spans decline. It's because EVERYTHING is noisy. Even the children books and toys are flashy and noisy. It's not like you wake up one day and have attention or not, it's something that is learned over long periods of time. How is any one supposed to grow up learning focus with all that junk around? I think a lot of these things are designed to get attention from children. The toy, book, and even children clothing manufacturers compete with each other on attention, ultimately I would argue with the goal of making the biggest profits.

mlyle 3y ago
Small kids struggle with focus, and here it's a good thing: they work to expand their environment and explore. And, yes, you're totally right: too many toys and other things seem to exist to exploit this in the name of keeping kids quiet for a couple of minutes and extracting money from guardians. Not to mention the excessive use of tablets and screen time for kids under 5. But I'm talking about something somewhat different: I know quite a few 17-19 year olds that genuinely want to absorb information, but literally cannot hold focus through a 15 second interruption. This is way more prevalent now than a few years ago, and it seems to be the students who are obsessed with short-form video that struggle the most. I think all the things you're mentioning are relevant, but the big thing is that with mobile devices and short-form content we've created an environment where distraction never lets up. Most of us had to learn to be bored during some of our summer and sit with the feeling: that opportunity doesn't really exist now for youth.
DANmode 3y ago
> TL;DR Too perfect.
somenameforme 3y ago
A "neat" thing is that this exact same behavior is present in adults. Numerous studies have demonstrated a negative impact on focus (and other factors) when a person's phone is in their vicinity, even if it's completely inactive. I'd hypothesize it's our bodies becoming somewhat acclimated to the little micro-dopamine bursts you're going to get each time you get a bzzt, brrt, beep, or other sort of "engagement" (read: addiction) optimized notifier letting you know that something has happened. Even just seeing your phone, your body just starts anticipating it, and waiting for its next hit - in the same way your mouth may begin to salivate when looking at a delicious plate of food. I suspect we'll look back at this era we're living in, the same way we might look back at the 19th century. In the 19th century cocaine started showing up in just about everything. It was used in medicinal tonics, casual drinks like Coca Cola (cocaine + kola nut), and more. People would use it recreationally, employers would give it to their workers, inventors and others (among them, Thomas Edison) would use it to improve their productivity, and more. Given the dramatic side effects of cocaine, people certainly realized there was a problem - but inertia is one hell of a beast.

wraptile 3y ago

> when people get used to consuming content in 30 second blipverts, they become unable to maintain attention through a 10 second break in the action. I keep hearing this but is there actual evidence? My anecdata is that I can watch tiktoks and read programming books all day without one impacting the other. I honestly have trouble believing that our attention mechanism is so flawed it can be broken so easily. I think the more likely explanation is that consumed content is just more efficient these days. In other words, it's not our attention span that's changing but our data culture. I think that's a good thing too.

andirk 3y ago
What kind of knowledge are all you getting from Tiktok? Technical knowledge? Philosophical? I thought the app was for lip syncing + lazy cheerleading and the occasional Chinese data mining. But I am perfectly happy hopping on the bandwagon if it has substance!
- wraptile 3y ago
  It's a totally under rated platform imo - there are a lot of high quality creators! In particular I'm following UX (@designertom), CX and design channels as I'm still transitioning from backend to full stack development. Tech news, Producthunt-like content (especially in bleed edge areas like AI), art stuff, technical gardening (@transformativeadventures), science stuff (@hankgreen) and health/workout (@dr_idz). The initial problem with tiktok is that you need quite a bit of time to train the algorithm to actually give you the stuff you want as the search and other discovery areas are really bad on purpose. Also worth noting that Tiktok now supports long form content so some video can get pretty long. The player also has 2x video speed and good seeker so it's easy to roll through a lot of information very efficently!
- somenameforme 3y ago
  I just use all the various sites as tools, instead of having loyalty anywhere. Search for something you're interested in and see what shows up. YouTube is definitely no longer the central repository of everything that it once was. A good way to demonstrate the average difference between YouTube and TikTok is to show the same video from the same guy, but optimized for different platforms. This is a video on deadlift form (in weight training): TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@jeremyethier/video/7198936808133020933 https://www.tiktok.com/@jeremyethier/video/71989368081330209... YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxWcirHIwVo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxWcirHIwVo No idea what the deal is, but I'm guessing the YouTube algorithm is optimized for longer form videos so a lot of stuff ends up with just a lot of filler. The TikTok video is everything in the YouTube video, but with all the fluff removed. I've also used TikTok for foreign language lessons with excellent results, largely for the same reason. The videos tend to have a lot better information density than what YouTube optimizes for. ---- Also, just watching that YouTube version again. Perhaps one of the best things is no more "If you like this video be sure to like, subscribe, and comment below. It really helps the channel out." An algorithm that relies on such a stupid, gameable, opt-in metric is always going to be inherently dysfunctional.

throwaway2037 3y ago

The flip side is that when people get used to consuming content in 30 second blipverts, they become unable to maintain attention through a 10 second break in the action. I see this written so frequently. Is there any studies to back up this claim? Please forgive me: Normally, I abhor the "citation please" type of response, but this claim is misleading to me. It just sounds like grumpy old person complaining about speed of the world and young(er) people. Example: I tried Googling for "does consuming short content make it harder to focus on longer content?". None of the content is scientific research, just a bunch of blowhards writing "it's never been worse" blog posts.

hanselot 3y ago
Well, I can't give you a neurological point of view on it, but if you train an LLM to be great at handling a context size of 512 tokens, when you try to ask it to do a task which requires greater context length (or in this context - attention span), the responses become incoherent, scattered and perplex as hell. Which I imagine to be what would happen to a human if they trained their brain to process information of a certain context length exclusively. So yeah, perhaps your brain becomes amazing at processing succinct information that's been engineered to be short, to the point and has none of the subtext or subtlety that you could include in a larger context. That being said, perhaps that's exactly the kind of mental capacity you need for high context switching professions, I'm not sure which those are yet, but I'm sure there has to be someone in the world that has a use for that.
maroonblazer 3y ago
> Is there any studies to back up this claim? Did you read TFA? It's the entire subject of the piece. One could analogize attention as a muscle. If you're only lifting 5KG dumbbells, you're not going to be able to lift 25KG.
- anthlax 3y ago
  The articles conclusion is explicitly that there is no valuable literature on the subject