this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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chapotraphouse
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People keep saying this but it really doesn't hold up. Moistcritikal videos get viewed like crazy and the guy posts 2-3 videos of himself rambling at a camera every day, each 10-20 minutes long, no jumpcuts or loud noises either. The daily Hasanabi videos are all easily 30 minutes long. Hell, MrBeast videos are all well over 10 minutes long as well. Wendigoon has seen a meteoric rise over the past year and his videos are all hour long stories about creeypasta stuff etc. Iceberg videos have been a huge trend and those are all really long as well.
The theory that people's attention spans keep getting shorter and people can't watch longer videos anymore doesn't match up with the trends on Youtube. Videos are not getting shorter, not at all.
People have been saying this about the attention spans of the youths at LEAST since Television dropped, and probably since books dropped
Yep. Plato wrote about being worried that the rise of literacy rates among the youth would rot their brains, because they'd never have to memorize stuff if they could just write it down.
There's actually some merit to that. People have a harder time remembering things that they know are written down and retrievable (because there's less need)
Absolutely. There's also some merit to similar worries about television and the internet. It's just never the civilization-ending infocalypse that it's cracked up to be (or at least not so far).
well... there's a few things about that. Within youtube itself there are different incentives than there might be on other platforms, and changes in rules, recommendation algorithms, and advertising methods have all contributed to shaping what kind of content does well as much or more than people's attention spans or preferences. There was a time when short videos were king, but changes to monetization and such shifted away from that.
But if you look industry wide there has been an explosion in the short form stuff. it's not prima facie evidence of declining attention spans but it is a real trend that has probably brought the average down.
IMO it's just two different ways to retain attention: a long drawn out explanation or story with the promise of some payoff where it all comes together or builds to a big moment (often lacking), versus rapid fire content coming at you so fast it doesn't even really matter if its that good as long as its stimulation.
the "declining attention span" thing feels real in other ways though. Most people I know couldn't sit down and read a book for any length of time if they tried.