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We got beat… by the goldfish! Is this for real?

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Are we less attentive than goldfish?

Who would have thought that the goldfish would beat us one day? Isn’t that crazy? I hope you feel insulted because this is laughable.

At some point in your life, you probably made fun of someone because he had the “Attention span of a goldfish”.

Even though Disney/Pixar’s Dory is not a goldfish, you probably know that she suffers from memory losses, too.
Well, according to a Microsoft survey, we are now officially worse than goldfish.

Every day, it gets harder to grab and, more importantly, keep people’s attention.

Children, students, prospects, clients… if you need to get a message across, you better make an impact.

This isn’t surprising, given the information overload we are experiencing. Many of us watch TV while checking Instagram, Facebook or even Youtube.

We intuitively know that we are easily distracted or bored, but maybe you didn’t know how bad it supposedly is.

8 seconds only attention span

According to the 2015 survey by Microsoft, the average attention span of the 2,000 Canadian participants was 8 seconds.

That’s shorter than the attention span goldfish got, which presumably is 9 seconds!!

Maybe that’s why we sigh in frustration at “Your video will start in 5 seconds”.

It takes forever. And now that Youtube changed its policy, it’s even worse. Sometimes, we have to suffer through over 10 seconds of ads before we can finally get to the content we came for.

Is the attention span a myth?

However, others believe that this goldfish comparison is a myth and cannot be taken at face value.

More comprehensive research on the subject is necessary. You can find a critical and funny article here.

This Learning Ninja post isn’t about whether or not the survey applies to you and me.

In any case, we clearly don’t want to waste our time with poor content. We skim and sift quickly through the web until something grabs our attention.

And if it is interesting, we keep on reading.

As long as we find insightful, entertaining or helpful content, our attention span will be fine. We just don’t tolerate mediocrity.
Never mind the goldfish!

Regards,

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So what’s your take on the survey? Info or intox?

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