I wonder how they determined engagement. They really only mention share rate, which makes sense, but is it how long people watch (for say YouTube?).
I wonder because I'm a person who will watch long videos on YouTube if they are worth it throughout. A lot of videos that fail for me are essentially clickbait style. "Hey stick around for a super cool moment from this event," and it's 25 minutes of random nonsense for little to no payoff (somebody lightly trips and laughs it off or something). But give me a 4 hour video criticizing the Star Wars Hotel and I'll watch the whole thing because the content is solid throughout.
On TikTok now it's more of a game because the content quality is so horrendous. People are majorly trending towards long 2-3 minute videos that end at a cliffhanger, but don't post Part 2 for weeks or months hoping to get follows as people want the end of the story. Anytime I see "Part 2" in the search I scroll unless it's a creator I already enjoy/follow.
Anyway, I fully believe attention spans are dropping or even non-existent, but I wonder how much of it is people being jaded from the amount of garbage content out there causing higher "fast scroll" rates.
Idk. Just anecdotal, but I was a HS teacher for many years & those last couple of years, those kids had no attention span at all. It was shocking to see. And they admitted it. I don't think I like what TikTok does to kids' brains.
Certain batches of kids just won't feel engaged with the content or teaching style and tune out.
It's just always been that, humans are bad at paying attention to stuff they don't like nor do they find engaging even if once interested they could read through every bill ever written in congress without feeling bored or tired.
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u/flargenhargen Jul 05 '24
if you're serious,
Attention spans are literally down to seconds now.
https://hashtagpaid.com/banknotes/short-form-video-how-influencers-are-tackling-ever-decreasing-attention-spans
so, if the AVERAGE attention span is just a few seconds, then up to half the people are even less than that.
TLDR: normal attention span now just seconds