Unfortunately, Attention Spans Are Getting Shorter | Intellectual Takeout

Unfortunately, Attention Spans Are Getting Shorter | Intellectual Takeout

"Human beings today now have a shorter attention span than a goldfish.

That’s what a study conducted by Microsoft last year found. A goldfish loses focus after nine seconds. In our age of smartphones, however, the average person today can only focus for eight seconds.

That’s a dramatic change from 2000, when the average human attention span was 12 seconds.

It wasn’t always this way. 

For instance, in Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Neil Postman has pointed out the remarkable attention spans demonstrated by the attendees of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates in Illinois in 1858.

...And the attendees were not primarily scholars or government officials, but average Americans:

“The first of the seven famous debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas took place on August 21, 1858, in Ottowa, Illinois. Their arrangement provided that Douglas would speak first, for one hour; Lincoln would take an hour and a half to reply; Douglas, a half hour to rebut Lincoln’s reply...

The Lincoln-Douglas debates are but one example of the impressive literary culture that pervaded America in past centuries—a culture that valued things that required more than eight seconds of one’s attention."