8-Second Attention Spans: Tracking the myth that just won’t quit

Well, I guess you won’t be reading to the end of this article; because — as TIME put it — “You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish.”

Context

Sensationalism

The many sensationalist reports — including those from USA Today, the National Post, the New York Times, and Guardian — and seen in many articles, books, infographics, seminars, etc., all basically say the same thing: A 2015 study from Microsoft Canada found that people’s attention spans have gone from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2013, while goldfish have 9-second attention spans.

This infographic (pictured above) — taken straight from the report — is responsible for a lot of nonsense.

Cause for confusion

While Microsoft is an impressive citation, this “attention span” claim never actually came from their research. As you can see in the bottom-left corner of the screenshot, the source says ”Statistic brain.” That’s the Statistic Brain Research Institute; but when you go down the rabbit-hole of their references, you find two sources they cite:

• First is the aggregation of a few sources: “National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine, The Associated Press,” which is not actually a proper citation at all. When requested for confirmation on these claims, these organizations are always saying they can’t verify the claims, wondering why they were even referenced.
• The other source is a legitimate study from 2008 (described in the following section). However, if they’re citing a study from 2008, where did the 2013 comparison come from? Unsurprisingly, Statistic Brain never responded to Simon Maybin from the BBC when he reached out for comment back in 2017, and they never responded or made a public statement about it.

Searching for Goldfish

The 2008 study

The perfectly legitimate 25-participant study in question — Not quite the average: An empirical study of Web use (2008) — investigates how our Internet-related behaviour has changed since the early days of static websites to dynamic web apps with complex interactions. It largely focuses on our use of the back button on our web browsers. And notably: no mention of goldfish.

However, there is one section that might have been mistakenly construed as relating to “attention span” (bolds are mine):

“….participants stayed only for a short period on most pages. 25% of all documents were displayed for less than 4 seconds, and 52% of all visits were shorter than 10 seconds (median: 9.4s). However, nearly 10% of the page visits were longer than two minutes. […] The peak value of the average stay times is located between 2 and 3 seconds; these stay times contribute 8.6% of all visits.”

I speculate that some people looked at the “52%” and started thinking this was evidence for our attention span lasting 9 seconds.

But even if we were to pretend that this study was about attention span — which it’s not — or generalize a study with only 25 participants (and only a 52% majority being under 10 seconds)… it still doesn’t explain where the “8 seconds” came from. Why aren’t they citing “9 seconds,” as in the “9.4” median score the researchers mentioned? Maybe because it makes it easier to compare us to goldfish at 9 seconds?

Fishy citations

In his 2014 book “Brief: Make a Bigger Impact by Saying Less,” Joseph McCormack wrote “Prevailing research says that the average attention span is down to 8 seconds from 12 over the past five years.” I’m not sure where he got those particular numbers, but the study he cited for this was, sure enough, the 2008 study above. The “past five years” quote would refer to 2009–2014; but how can he claim anything about that timeframe by citing a study from 2008?

So you may be wondering “then where did the whole goldfish reference come from?”

I suspect that it mostly goes back to a BBC article from 2002 called “Turning into digital goldfish.” In fact, this is what Sally Hogshead, author of “How the World Sees You” cited when she claimed that you need to make your first impression within 9 seconds, before we lose our attention. Her book also came out in 2014.

BCA v. Singh

Whether it’s someone selling a service, or just trying to get more eyeballs on their content, it’s not unheard of for people to cite real studies, but which don’t actually support the claims they make. It’s as if they think we’ll be too lazy or busy to verify them — which is often true. But this reminds me of a famous case from 2008–2010.

In 2009, the BCA (British Chiropractic Association) submitted 29 studies as evidence with which to sue science writer Simon Singh for libel, after he wrote (in the Guardian, 2008) that “the chiropractic profession […] happily promotes bogus treatments,” with loads of evidence for the dangers of the practice. None of the BCA’s studies actually refuted what Singh had stated in his article; and so in 2010, Singh effectively won the case.

I assume “Statistic Brain” submitted a few red herring sources much in the same was as the BCA did — hoping that people wouldn’t actually dig too deep into them.

Attention span

What it does (not) mean

Let’s consider some definitions of “attention span” (bolds are mine):

• The length of time for which a person is able to concentrate mentally on a particular activity. (Google’s English dictionary / Oxford Languages)
• The interval during which an individual can concentrate, as on a single object, idea, or activity. (Dictionary.com)
• How long you can focus on something or spend on a task before you need a break or get distracted (WebMD)
• The length of time that someone can keep their thoughts and interest fixed on something (Cambridge dictionary)

Notice that it’s always about the ability to concentrate. Lazy reporters may suggest that since people don’t do something, it must be because they can’t do it (eg. staying on a webpage that’s loading slowly)… but that’s not a fair characterization. Let’s consider this in context.

If a restaurant’s menu webpage fails to load quickly, and you have lots of alternatives to choose from nearby, you might leave it quickly and go to a competitor. Is that because of a low attention span, or just impatience? As Shaun Buck from Entrepreneur puts it: “The problem isn’t attention span; the problem is we have an infinite number of options to choose from.”

The case for common sense

The way so many of these articles have been read, it’s as if people all over the world thought that in 2015, we suddenly became temporarily brain-dead at 9 seconds into any psychological experience. Wouldn’t someone have noticed this overnight global change in cognition?

For context, the runtime of the Academy Award winner for Best Picture in 2015 (Birdman) was 2 hours. This year’s winner (Everything Everywhere All at Once) was 2 hours, 20 seconds. Did some people they think the audience just tuned out at the start of the opening credits? It defies common sense.

Even the fictional character “Ten-second Tom” from the comedy movie “50 First Dates” — who suffered from extremely severe anterograde amnesia (the inability to form new memories) — was able to focus for a whole 2 seconds longer than the fictional humans from this made-up data.

And yet, in 2022, King’s College London was part of a major UK public survey that found:

• 50% of respondents “wrongly believe the average attention span among adults today is just eight seconds long.”
• 50% of respondents believe that we have a worse attention span than goldfish

Goldfish-ology

Goldfish have an unwarranted reputation for their inability to learn/focus, but a few notable studies include research out of Israel that the Telegraph reported on in 2009, which found goldfish were able to remember things for at least 5 months. Also, an amateur scientist from the US (who won a Young Naturalist Award for her research in 2015) observed their ability to retain spatial memory even 6 months after learning to navigate a maze. Furthermore, also from Israel, researchers in 2022 taught goldfish to “drive” a vehicle.

…Yep, you read that right.

Rather than explaining how that works, I’ll just share a picture (but there’s a video in the article), and a quote by researcher Shachar Givon:

Surprisingly, it doesn’t take the fish a long time to learn how to drive the vehicle. They’re confused at first. They don’t know what’s going on but they’re very quick to realise that there is a correlation between their movement and the movement of the machine that they’re in.

Bad reporting

Misunderstanding the science

At the time, aside from the sources that ran with the idea that Canadians have a sub-goldfish level of attention span, we also saw the NBA freak out about whether their games are too long, and people started to wonder whether politicians (namely Hilary Clinton) would be able to appeal to people in such small (ie. 8-second) tidbits during election season in the US. And of course, a quick Google search will reveal the myriad of marketers still quoting this myth today.

These are all unwarranted. In fact, in Microsoft’s report, the very first sentence of the Foreword on page 1 reads: “Think digital is killing attention spans? Think again.”

Confusing messages

Ironically, some are so quick to report these claims without the apparent attention span to actually read the first page of the report. But if the first sentence wasn’t clear enough, the Foreword ends with “Rest assured, digital won’t be the cause of our (at least attentional) downfall.”

So I’m not sure who to blame… the lazy reporting of the publications who want to get more eyeballs on their articles through sensationalism, or Microsoft for including it in the first place?

Actually, I do know — it’s Microsoft’s fault.

They should’ve issued a statement officially retracting/disregarding that infographic, or releasing a new version… or done anything to better communicate that the claims have not been substantiated and shouldn’t have been included in the first place. They don’t belong in that report at all, as they undercutting other points in the report.

Now we know better… right?

The claim (still) heard ‘round the world

Even with the benefit of plenty of research and repudiations later, I found tons of recent articles still quoting this discredited claim. Even recent books, like The Psychology of Websites (2021) are still getting duped by this report. Author Matthew Capala erroneously states “Microsoft’s study revealed that humans have an attention span of 8 seconds” (p. 141).

Microsoft’s perpetuation of their own myth

While researching for this article, I came across a 2021 piece on Microsoft’s own website, again referencing the 8-second myth they were responsible for:

Today’s consumers are seemingly always in a hurry, with little time or patience for sales pitches. […]

Eight seconds.

Studies show that’s how long you have to capture someone’s attention.

But what’s even more bizarre than how Microsoft perpetuated this myth is that in their own reference section (at the bottom of the article), they actually link to the BBC report I mentioned above. It’s entitled “Busting the attention span myth,” as you can see from this screenshot (reference #2).

And yet… even more perplexing is how they never actually reference this piece anywhere in their article(!)… which means that it didn’t need to be included there at all.

I am truly dumbfounded by this inclusion; but at least we know they can’t claim to be ignorant of the BBC story which refutes the claim made in this very article… because it’s right there!

Conclusion

If you ever hear someone claiming what the infographic states… just remember that: a) they’re probably trying to sell you something, and b) these claims are based off a report that cites research that doesn’t appear to have ever existed, plus one legit study that didn’t say this at all.

Even if our attention spans are actually dwindling (they probably are), it’s important to separate legitimate science from pseudoscience. Falsehoods can have real-world consequences, such as when people make substantial decisions based on them; or denigrating the rigorous standards that psychology research is supposed to live up to.

Just because it feels true (considering how distracted we are with constant info, ads, notifications, etc.), it doesn’t mean it is true. The myth lives on because it’s surprising, believable, and memorable. But if you care to learn about our evolving understanding of human psychology, I promise you that the reality is much more fascinating than the myths.