Our attention spans are short. I mean, really short. How short? They're shorter than a goldfish's, which is nine seconds. We hardly can focus on something before becoming distracted.
Here are some alarming stats from the Center for Biotechnology Information:
• 25% of teens forget major details of their close friends and relatives.
• 7% of people forget their own birthdays from time to time.
• An office workers checks his/her email box 30X per hour.
• Typical mobile users check their phone at least 150X per day.
• 17% of website pageviews last fewer than 4 seconds.
So, basically, we forget who our friends are, when our own birthdays are, how to read more than 4 seconds worth of text... but we somehow remember to check our work email inbox all day long.
The most interesting stat from this study relates to our decreasing attention spans. In 2000, we had a whole 12 seconds to pay attention, compared to today's paltry 8 seconds.
If you're wondering about the culprit, look at our technology.
In 2003, LinkedIn and MySpace launched. In 2004, Facebook and Digg launched, grabbing every college-aged kid's attention until later monopolizing everyone's attention. In 2005, YouTube and Reddit launched. In 2006, Twitter launched. In 2007, Tumblr launched. In 2010, Pinterest and Instagram launched. In 2011, Snapchat launched. Add to that a zillion other sites and a million text messages all vying for your precious 8 seconds.
What This Shortened Attention Span Means for Marketers
This diminishing attention span makes marketers' job incredibly hard. Whether someone sees this post, clicks it, shares it, or even reads it all depends on my capturing your attention. Maybe I'm doing a good job, maybe not. But, I can't help wonder whether our world of social media, apps, nonstop content, and "always on" mindset is making us dumber, more distracted, less creative, and more likely to mentally check out when we can't figure something out the first time.
Joe Kraus, a serial entrepreneur and partner with Google Ventures, gave a presentation in which he offers an alternative coined "slow tech." In his presentation, he says, "We are creating and encouraging a culture of distraction where we are increasingly disconnected from the people and events around us, and increasingly unable to engage in long-form thinking. People now feel anxious when their brains are unstimulated.
"We are losing some very important things by doing this," Kraus states "We threaten the key ingredients behind creativity and insight by filling up all our 'gap' time with stimulation. And we inhibit real human connection when we prioritize our phones over the people right in front of us."
Most of us place a tremendous amount of importance on technology and would be lost without it. I think there can be a happy medium between overstimulation and complete disconnect, and marketers can champion this less distracting way of reaching audiences.