We Don’t Actually Have the Attention Span of a Goldfish
We’re just really tired of ads.
Where did this ‘goldfish’ factoid come from? The origin was a study done by Microsoft’s advertising department, which was then popularized by Time magazine. All the links I found to the pdf of the original study were broken. Microsoft has taken it off of their website, based on my search on their site for the word ‘goldfish’.
Does the finding sound plausible to anyone? We don’t read entire books in 8-second increments. A standard ‘Pomodoro’ is 20 minutes. “How are Netflix binges a thing?” this blog post, which is worth a read, says in criticism of the ‘study’ — the finding neither passes the common sense test nor does it properly cite scientific research.
Tellingly, the source of this factoid is an advertising department. Those bemoaning our lack of attention are those who would like a piece of it for their own purposes.
I will spend hours of my attention on subjects worthy of it — books, math problems, videos that I choose for myself. Whereas I can ‘x’ out of that ad window in a fraction of a second.
I think this is what is really happening. As we grow accustomed to the internet, we hone our defenses. We filter out the junk and attention sinks with heightened instincts, making advertisers’ jobs…
