Speed changed our Attention span

Speed changed our Attention span

2 Concepts: Streams of attention Speed economy

The old idea that our attention span has reduced is a bad idea. The truth is the nature of attention changed because we got used to speed - very fast things in life - and that gave us the ability to multi-task and want more and faster.

WHY are we watching videos where a story is narrated with the video being a random Minecraft gameplay? WHY are we using 3 screens at a time to view 3 different things?

Speed economy: Expectation and habituation with speed. Streams of attention: Different things to focus on by rapidly switching between the 2.

Speed Economy

We got habituated to getting this fast. Faster rewards, faster changes, faster access, faster resolutions. Our brain expects everything to be fast. We got used to multi-tasking and following multiple streams of attention.

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Old media - unstimulating

Old media became less stimulating. It was slower. Food delivery was slower. Downloads were slower. Access to whole seasons of episodes were slower.

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New media - hyper stimulating

New media became hyper stimulating, not by just speeding up but by giving us more things to pay attention to. These are streams of attention.

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The Result: Multi-tasking, speed, stimulation-seeking

Split screen videos Using 3 screens at a time while studying Watching a TV show while scrolling insta.

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What happens now

We NOW need multiple streams of stimulation to multi-task and multi-focus just to stay stimulated and engaged. Otherwise, it's to slow and too little stimulation. This emerges from the expectation of speed that increases our need for reward and changes.

Streams of attention

Our attention system got faster at switching between streams so we can capture any of the streams that offers us the stimulation. In some cases, 2+ streams are needed to satisfy our need for speed.

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