One trend in society that has been undeniable during my lifetime is a reduction in attention spans. Everything happens much faster these days and there is no tolerance for wasting time. It would be stereotypical of somebody of my age to bemoan this trend, but I take more of a mixed position. The trend has certainly done some damage but it has had benefits as well. The trick would be to limit the damage while enjoying the benefits.
To comprehend just how strong the trend has been I only have to recall my own experiences. At school, lessons were forty-five minutes and once we reached fourteen most classes became double that length. At sixteen I sat a long series of three-hour exams (perched next to a huge south facing gym window during a historic heat wave), most of which required several essays to be scrawled in long hand.
When I started at work, I would often have to read or even create a business or project plan, and anything under fifteen pages of tight script was considered thin. In my thirties a rather austere mentor called Tony Brearley taught me the art of the concise note. I would pay visits to Shell businesses around Europe, and try to summarize my findings within two pages of (by now typed) script. I titled these Actions and Agreements and the struggle was always to find language that was clear, complete and concise. I have been grateful to Tony ever since, for that skill has served me well.
Nowadays I often need to compose e-mails or documents for choir business. The topics may be more mundane but the requirements are the same – clarity, completeness and concision. But I notice now that two pages is far too long: the most I can get away with is one page, and even then I have to accept that most people will not read the whole document. I have to place the critical bits in bold right at the top and refer to them again in cover notes. I am told that my language is too dense, and people request pictures or videos or other excuses to avoid spending a few minutes digesting something. I try to adapt but I always seem to be behind the trend.
You can see the same trend in all media. I started a subscription with the Guardian Weeklytwenty-five years ago, and the periodical is about the same overall size now as it was then. The difference is that each article is now about half as long, and most have pictures, whether or not the picture actually adds anything to the story. They also include sidebars so that our precious attention can be retained. I would much rather read properly researched stories presented in sufficient depth.
The Economistis a glorious exception, and that may be one reason I love it so much. It might also explain its successful growth in popularity. There can be a market for refusing to bow to a trend.
In TV, I notice a difference between the US and the UK. Pretty well everything produced primarily for a US audience nowadays pays homage to short attention spans, with fast moving plots and constant visualisation, at the expense of depth. Many of the best UK programmes have become successful precisely by bucking that trend. In comedy, look at The Caféor Detectorists, among others. I cruelly describe these shows as “nothing ever happens”, but that is their charm. In real life scenarios develop slowly, and individual characters respond to situations gradually. This sort of show allows an audience to empathise.
We can be grateful for Netflix, because slowly even the Americans are realising that different fare is effective for different segments, and new technology allows for more of those markets to be served. Now there are many more series that I can find to enjoy.
The same trend can be seen in sports. Cricket has retained its slow, strategic format but added faster alternatives. Baseball has not adapted, its devotees obsessed with historical statistics, and its popularity has suffered, though I adore the game just as it is. Rugby has been smartest, introducing a series of rule changes to add pace and entertainment. I still remember Billy Beaumont commenting on a dull international in the 1980’s: “That’s the goal in rugby; kick the ball off the pitch”.
The examples show that short attention spans have benefits, especially if flexible formats can satisfy different audiences. The demand for instant satisfaction has led to positive innovation in many fields.
What about politics? My daughter gave me a revealing quote when we saw her over the summer. “Has Biden done anything yet?” She picks up her news from the feeds on social media. Social media feed the frenzy for sensation. Biden doesn’t feature at all.
So who is the villain here? Is it social media, populist politicians, my daughter or none of the above? We can’t blame social media: they only give the public what they want. I can ask my daughter to show more interest in the world around her and to be more discerning about her sources, but that is her business really. And we can argue that the populist politicians are also only doing their job, at least as long as there are not lying: a good marketer understands media and message.
I can make a gripe about basic education. Advertisers, moviemakers and snake oil salesmen all have an incentive to try to simplify issues, so that an action or preference can be prompted by something as simple as a talking point. So education has to balance this tendency.
We could be taught a module on logical reasoning. It goes back to those over-long business plans that my career started with. The chapter headings remain as valid as they ever were. Define a problem or challenge, then a goal and why it is beneficial. Explore possible diagnoses and solutions, with pros and cons and risks and possible unintended consequences. Then propose a solution and a plan to achieve it, with roles, milestones, incentives, performance indicators and contingencies. If we could all mentally run through this sort of checklist every time we read that “the Dems want to give money to illegals”, and also understood a little more about all the pitfalls of our biases, then we could avoid falling for so much simplistic guff.
We should follow our own logic to avoid a simplistic narrative that things used to better before, and that Mark Zuckerberg and others are plotting to dumb down society for nefarious purposes (though Rupert Murdoch does have a lot to answer for). True, in the past plans were more thorough and political parties published long manifestos. But did anybody ever read them? I don’t think so. Complexity and fancy language was how the establishment elite kept control – Tony Brearley was a master of that and taught me the same dark art. Even my concise two-pagers were dense enough to bamboozle people whose native language was not English. If there is manipulation now, it is just different manipulation by different people.
And anyway, who wants to watch a sport when the ball is never on the pitch or when players waste time as a tactic? Let progress happen and don’t blame the platforms for doing a good job, indeed celebrate technology for allowing a segmented diet so even fogeys like me can be satisfied. But also champion education in the modern skills that we all need to navigate the world successfully.
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