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I Need Your Attention For More Than 30 Seconds

Maarten Ribalet-Coesel
EXPERIENCE. Media often portrays the highschool experience as an idealized version of life, leaving many teens feeling unseen. Photo courtesy of Google.
EXPERIENCE. Media often portrays the highschool experience as an idealized version of life, leaving many teens feeling unseen. Photo courtesy of Google.

With the rise of social media, our attention spans are waning. Apps like TikTok and Instagram have created a culture where our attention isn't needed after around 15 seconds. The music industry has responded to this by having artists make shorter songs. For example, the most streamed song by a female artist in 2024, “Espresso,” clocks in at only two minutes and fifty-five seconds. The chorus alone is 43% of the song. So how is this change affecting all aspects of today’s culture and daily life?

If you watch TV shows from the late 1990s and early 2000s, you’ll notice that the shows are vastly different too. Movies and shows nowadays are jam-packed with action. In shows like Monk, a detective show that first aired in 2002, the average run time was 45 minutes. If we look at Only Murders in the Building, the average run time for an episode is 33 minutes.

Shows like Monk took their time to progress their story. TV shows and movies nowadays pack lots of action into a shorter time frame to keep audiences interested. The average length of a shot in a movie is now under 5 seconds. That is why franchises like Marvel have managed to stand the test of time because they’re so full of action.

We also see this phenomenon in album rollouts. One of the reasons why Radical Optimism by Dua Lipa was poorly received was because of the long album rollout. The album itself isn’t that bad, but the first single “Houdini” was released seven months before the album was released, and the other singles were also incredibly spaced apart. The momentum was already lost by the time the album came out.

Artists like Camila Cabello, Normani, and Tyla all had highly anticipated albums released this year. Their albums suffered because not enough promotion was done for people to realize they were releasing amongst all the music coming out this year. There is a fine line between being attention-grabbing, while also being concise with timing.

Other artists like Sabrina Carpenter and Billie Eilish have been smarter in their marketing. strategies. They’ve sold tour tickets early, and have succeeded in keeping up with the current media climate, which can be seen in their streaming and Billboard numbers. Carpenter’s “Short n’ Sweet” debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, and “Hit Me Hard and Soft’ by Eilish is the second most streamed album.

Not only has shortened attention spans affected the media, but it also affects us. In a CBS article, an expert in the field, Professor Gloria Mark, stated three downsides: “The first is that people make more errors when they do attention shifting; the second downside is that it takes longer to do something, 'cause we have to reorient to every new task every time we shift; the third downside -- maybe this is the worst of all -- is that stress increases. When people are working on multiple tasks and they have to shift their attention, their blood pressure rises."

The introduction of social media and on-demand streaming services has limited the attention spans of the current generation. And this is being reflected in the way media is being made, from short-form videos to music to cinema. It also affects your well-being. Mark gave CBS two tips on how to stay more focused. The first is that when you feel the itch to change tasks, analyze why; if it’s because of boredom or procrastination, consider working for 20 minutes longer. Secondly, picture yourself at the end of the day. What do you want to have accomplished? What do you want to feel? Having free time at the end of a long day is a good motivator to keep going.

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