Teacher here. I can absolutely see it in the attention spans of my students over the last few years vs those from even 5 years ago

The issue is the lack of long-form content’s ability to interest you. Nobody hates watching long videos now, it’s just that it’s far harder to find interesting content on Youtube than it is to simply scroll on tiktok, watch a video for 10 seconds, like it, and then get recommended videos alike that one you just liked.

I came across a youtube video on this subject a little while back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDfeOvUZ7Kk

The TL;DW is that our attention spans aren’t getting shorter, there’s just other stuff going on (mostly stress) that makes it feel like they are.

I was a TikTok user for a couple of months, one night I noticed that I had spent a couple of hours just watching these stupid videos and not remembering anything. Since then I have uninstalled the app and felt better.

I will admit to less patience for long videos & articles, but honestly I think there are good reasons for it. I’ve come to recognize when people are trying to stretch a topic and fill the void with useless puffery.

With a thriving competitive market for information video and long-form journalism, you can’t keep pulling that shit and expect people to sit through it, when the right arrow key is bit a few inches away from my hand.

Do you watch TV? Then you still watch videos that are 30 mins or longer. The difference is the format and quality of those videos are better at capturing your attention, that’s all. An hour long YouTube video that ISN’T structured like a TV show of some sort (like sketch comedy, news show, or a documentary) is just going to be a boring, terrible product.

I think there’s a temptation to think of “YouTube videos” as being that most common 2 to 10-minute talking head format. But you can’t just expand that format out to an hour and have it continue to be as engaging. It needs to morph into a different kind of production.

Here’s one of my favorite hour long YouTube videos from a great teacher named Nick Center:

https://youtu.be/VQhjkemEyUo

He’s so engaging that it doesn’t feel anywhere near an hour long.

Here’s 40 minutes of Pedro Pascal and Steven Yuen just…talking to each other: https://youtu.be/Ii_DYJkziGo

Anything by Bobby Broccoli

Just some of the actually good long-format YouTube videos I love to watch

I noticed this the other day, I get sucked into Instagram reels and spend a lot of time just swiping, before I realize it I’m down a rabbit hole and lost track of time. I’ve found that when I try to watch a TV episode, even something that is 25ish minutes long I get distracted really easily. Sometimes even fiddling around with Instagram while watching. I’m trying to be more conscious of this but I definitely feel my attention span is getting worse.

That’s a great observation - indeed, I experience the same occurrence with my attention span. Limiting the consumption of social media helps.

I started to feel that, and I felt like I was more impatient and irritable. Not claiming this is evidence, just my own intuition. So I don’t watch YT Shorts.

Also no TikTok, Reels, or any other clones of those.

i think the way you get served videos also plays a big part. on short form, you have to keep scrolling to find a video that interests you. whereas on long form you get to decide what to watch beforehand, from a bunch of recommendations

I was going to reply with something else but I my attention span is too short

Very much, yes. Why is that?

I think it’s because we got used to surround ourselves with high-pitched stimuli. Especially the digital world is designed to catch and keep our attention. There is kind of an evolutionary pressure for these services to develop in this direction, as those who manage to anchor themselves in our habits naturally displace others who don’t. Yes, addiction is another interesting, related topic, but let’s get back to attention span.

There are things we’d like to do, which are beneficial and provide long-term rewards, but we find it’s difficult for us to concentrate on them.

Reading a book. Learning or playing an instrument. Studying, even for subjects which we find genuinely interesting. Spending time with people off-screen, talking with relatives or neighbors.

These don’t give you a kick every few seconds like an instagram feed. When scrolling through lemmy, you could find the next exciting thing at every moment! Maybe the next Tinder profile is hot, or even a match? Oh, what’s that meme?

I don’t think short videos are particularly to blame or the root cause, I rather see them as one of many symptoms. Videos have to catch our attention with their thumbnail (which is often clickbaity exaggerated for that reason), and somewhat deliver the expected excitement, else the channel goes extinct.

I found myself using my phone as a second screen when the video on the big screen fails to keep my attention (of course it’s actually me failing to focus).

Our brain gets used to what becomes our norm, lower-pitched stimuli seem less exciting in contrast. Yes, I could pick up my guitar and try to slightly improve my skills with that song, or reap the instant reward with just one more click, or just one more scroll.

There is probably no alternative for the cure. Adjust the normal pitch so that the things you actually want to do seem like a really good idea. Actively abstain from being bathed in superficially exciting content, to make room for actually rewarding activities. Or in other words, embrace boredom.

2-10 minute videos are the worst. The information takes forever to get to and is super shallow, and most of them are going to be an advertisement for the youtuber I’m currently watching. A 30 minute video is fine. An hour long video, I’ll watch happily. Hell, I’ve watched movie-length videos on cool subjects with no problem.

But if I have to sit through 90 seconds of “smash that bell, thanks to my new subscribers whose screen names I’m going to read one at a time” before getting a nugget of content that can’t be more than a few seconds to a couple of minutes long, yeah, I have no attention span for that shit.

TL;DR /s

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