How the web has Refined our Attention Span
I bet you did not expect that did you? So many articles and posts out there saying how the web has ruined our attention span and turned us into tumblr, inspiring gallery, pixel twitter pushers, designers or web viewers. Rest assured that this is not true.
Where am I going with this? Well, the web has actually refined our attention span. Before the web and its many blogs of information, we relied on other media; TV, radio, newspaper, the like. With the efficiency of the internet, we can now go and find exactly what we are looking for when we want it. No need to wait for the second half of a news broadcast to hear about the part we are most interested in, we can go straight to it.
Why is this a bad thing? Well, its not.
The public enjoys stating facts about the lack of humanism in our world now, which is true to a small extent, but not to the magnitude they are saying in terms of attention spans. This is a band wagon that I will rectify, briefly here. Now that we have multiple sources to get the same information, it comes down to one thing: Trust. What source do we trust the most and which one can we BARE the most?
Its easy to say I have a short attention span because I skim articles and jump from page to page and reading a little bit of this or a bit of that. But I have a great attention span in fact, but its an issue of trust. I can skim an article, realize it is being written by a biased, ill informed person with poor grammar and then move on without wasting my time of going through the whole article. I will also begin reading and find “Hey, this guy is just writing some bogus article with so much filler to try and increase his web stats. I’m outta here.” I don’t like being taken for a ride.
The web allows users to evaluate content early and find something that pleases them most.
We (or I) skim because I want to find something of quality worth my time. It is the same reason you go to NYTimes for reading and information because you trust that they have hired quality writers who churn out quality content. This is important to understand. Anyone can write anything, but that doesn’t mean its worth our time to read nor does it mean because we briefly scanned it that we don’t maintain adequate control of our attention; just that we find our time of higher quality to waste on garbage. You don’t watch a whole TV episode to find out if you like it, you bounce through channels until you find something that is appealing and worth your time—this has been going on FAR longer than the web has been alive.
In the name of god, use subheadings.
If you have made it through this far of my article, rest assure your attention span is intact. One of the things I find many blogs, or writers, not doing is breaking their articles up into subheadings. Its a great way for the user to see if there is information pertinent to them. It also helps in evaluating the quality of an article; we can see how in depth the subheadings are and if there is some thought going on. If there are no subheadings, you can count on the fact that I will not read your article. I don’t want to thumb through to find out there isn’t anything thought provoking or note worthy; which is unfortunate because sometimes there is good content to be had by bad writers.
