I read a lot about dwindling attention spans. It seems self-evident — even in my own lived experience — that our general ability (or even perhaps desire) to concentrate is dwindling.
TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels are typically pointed to as Exhibits A, B, and C to support this.
The rise of ADHD (albeit often self-diagnosed) further proof.
But how universal is this? Sales of narrative fiction are at like all-time highs (ie. people are reading — or at least buying — a shitload of books); whereas films clocking in at over 3 hours were rare, now it's commonplace; and then there's podcasts.
This is what I wanted to explore. I'll leave books and film for another time. Some of the most popular podcasts in the English-speaking language are looooong. Joe Rogan is the prime example — and perhaps the originator or at least popularizer of this long format — is over 3 hours each episode.
But there are many others. And even if they're not all 3+ hours, so so many are at least an hour — which seems strange when, in the world of TikTok and YouTube Shorts, we're literally measuring things in seconds.
What's even stranger is that the audience for a lot of these podcasts, whether it be Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson or Lex Fridman, skew younger.
So if it's true that attention spans — especially among the youth — are getting worse, how the hell is anyone sitting through several hours of podcasts weekly?
I think the answer is they're not. Not sitting, at least.
Podcasts have become so popular in general because they fit perfectly with our modern inclination to multitask.
I wasn't alive then so this might be incorrect, but my vision of how people used to listen to radio programs (at least when radio was still new and novel) back in the day is that they'd indeed sit. They'd sit with each other and listen. That was the activity. Yes, I imagine there was conversation at times; questions or comments about what they'd just heard in that moment. But for the most part, their ears — indeed their attention — was fixated on the radio program.
When someone is 'listening' to three hours of Joe Rogan, I think they're doing a hell of a lot more than just sitting. They could be scrolling and swiping, sure. But they could also be doing laundry or other household chores. They might be driving or running or working out. Over the course of three hours, they could in fact be doing ALL of those things.
And that's quite alright. I'm not arguing that one most sit and concentration on Joe Rogan's every word to get every thing out of the experience.
I'm just arguing that 3-hour podcasts don't prove our attention spans are quite alright.
I said I wouldn't get into it, and for books I won't. But how can one explain why most movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are longer than they've ever been? If young people — their target demographic — struggle to pay attention in class for more than a few minutes, how are they sitting in one place for several hours?
I don't know the answer, but I have a couple guesses. For one thing, context matters when it comes to attention. We don't all have the same attention spans, and as individuals our attention spans can differ depending on the context (the object, our energy, our interest, and so on).
Just like someone could struggle to read a few pages of a physical book but have no problem playing their favourite video game for hours, so it goes for the classroom versus the movie theatre. If you're more passionate about Avengers than you are algebra, it will show.
But I think there's more to it. What has changed in film over the years beyond longer films is shorter shot length.
The average film shot length in 1930 was twelve seconds, but then began to shorten, reaching an average of less than four seconds after the year 2010, as measured by James Cutting and colleagues.
The shot length of the first Iron Man film averaged about 3.7 seconds; for Iron Man 2, 3.0 seconds; and for Iron Man 3, about 2.4 seconds.
So just like I wouldn't argue that someone who's scrolled Instagram for 2 hours straight was deeply focused and demonstrating remarkable attention, sitting through 3 hours of 2.4-second clips doesn't show the kids are alright either.