The Shortening Human Attention Span and What it Means for Content Creators

There are now more ways to consume content than ever, which means it’s becoming more difficult to capture and maintain a viewer’s attention.

In the last decade, the platforms with which we consume media have become increasingly accessible and numerous. Humans have adapted the ability to “multitask” with digital content out of necessity, and have therefore become better at filtering out irrelevant media. Studies show that, today, most viewers of cable television do so with another device in their hand. Users are able to browse another platform while commercials interrupt their viewing experience on the first one. Research by companies like Microsoft and Google has concluded that the development of these habits has ultimately led to a sharp erosion of the human attention span over time. This, obviously, manifests a unique set of challenges for marketers and content creators alike, especially in the traditional media space.

It’s no surprise that human consumption habits have changed drastically with the development of new technology. Digital platforms themselves have developed business models around short, “snackable” video content, i.e., Vine (RIP), TikTok, and Byte. Vine was disruptive because users could only upload six-second video loops. A viewer could scroll through the home page for hours and not realize it because every six seconds was a totally unique viewing experience and was often very entertaining. Today, more applications have adopted this model and this has become another facet of the Internet that contributes to our increased desire for instant gratification. In summary, if you as a creator don’t give viewers what they’re looking for almost immediately, they will keep scrolling.

I’ve encountered some of these challenges myself on the digital platforms that I manage daily. I looked at some analytics from my YouTube channel that I started a few years ago. My channel currently has almost 6,000 unique lifetime video views, but the average view duration is two minutes and 24 seconds (which I figured is the maximum duration someone can listen to me talk in one sitting). The average percentage viewed of all of my videos is 40.9% which has been steadily increasing as I learn to shorten content and engage an audience for longer periods of time. If you’re a video creator, I encourage you to look at this data and ensure you’re retaining viewers for the majority of your videos. If not, you might have to explore shortening the videos or look at which of your videos retain the most viewers and focus on developing that type of content. The same can be said for a blog that lives on a webpage like this.

For marketers, these challenges are becoming even more rampant. I mentioned earlier that humans are becoming better at filtering out content that is irrelevant to them. I know from my own experience that if a video or photo is trying to sell me something, I usually label it as irrelevant and continue scrolling (unless it’s an ad for protein or something). With ads, you generally have an even shorter window to grab a viewer’s attention because chances are they did not seek out that content. I’m not saying videos are now an ineffective marketing tool, they’re actually still the most effective way to engage an audience. Humans can still pay attention through long movies and TV shows because we get invested in the story and the characters. Video marketing can be incredibly effective if creators use this concept to focus less on selling and more on telling (that was such a good line). Make sure your marketing materials include relatable characters and a compelling story, and viewers will be far more likely to engage with your content.

The development of new consumption habits and shorter attention spans now necessitates repetition for marketing to be memorable. For example, most companies that ran commercials in the Super Bowl this year also ran digital campaigns on social media and traditional campaigns on billboards. This ensures that anyone who saw an entertaining commercial on TV might also see an ad when they check their phone and then might see an ad on their way to the store which greatly increases the probability that they purchase the advertised product. My advice to creators is to diversify the channels that you’re updating to maximize the number of opportunities viewers have to interact with your content on platforms that are comfortable to them.

Thank you for reading and congratulations if you made it through the entire post.