Paolo Kernahan

I'VE PROBABLY lost quite a few readers already, but not for the reasons you might imagine.

There's an ongoing debate about attention spans. Some say attention spans have shrunk. Others insist they haven't. The problem, they claim, is that the content - blogs, videos, books, etc - in some cases, just isn't any good.

Folks in the denial camp point to continuing growth in the popularity of podcasts - 464 million (and growing) global listeners. Movies on average are getting longer, even if not necessarily better.

However, compelling scientific research has tracked the decline in attention spans in recent years. Modern stressors coupled with the ubiquity of distractions - social media, streaming, gaming - have all whittled away our focus.

Online platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube simply mirror the consumption patterns of audiences. Video lengths, to a considerable *extent*, are dictated by the never-ending swipe that's such a big part of contemporary culture. It's not just video content. Online articles, in many cases, are noticeably shorter. Some have appended to them "a four-minute read." That reads like shorthand for, c'mon, this isn't going to take that much time.

Makes you wonder how modern audiences are getting through books like War and Peace or The Lord of the Rings. Some of the classics I read in my youth were written back when the principal means of entertainment was sitting around and looking at the radio. Committing to a book like Of Human Bondage was an easier prospect when there were no smartphones or computers.

The truth about attention spans today is more nuanced than a yes-or-no debate. Our ability to sustain focus has been changed by environmental conditions - increased competition for our attention both online and offline. Yet, some data on consumption seems to spar aggressively with the idea of fleeting focus. Contrary to urban myth, people are still reading books. Most signs in the industry point to continued growth in the book market.

What's changed is how these books are being read. People are reading fewer books than they did before, but they're also reading them in sips rather than giving over an hour to a decent immersion. Again, this comes down to the hydra-headed nature of modern living.

Consequently, the way we consume information or entertainment has evolved to account for the division of our focus. Let's look at podcasts again for a moment. Yes, there's growth in that niche, but how many people are actually listening?

In one survey, nearly 60 per cent of respondents said they listen to podcasts while doing something else - driving, commuting, chores, exercising, etc. That's diluted attention, which is less than desirable depending on your niche. The "listening" is intermittent, so the attention is fragmented.

Online content has to be engineered to adapt to the distractable nature of contemporary audiences. Here's a great example and a paradox rolled into one - blogs. It's typically recommended that most blog posts sho