Title: Busting the attention span myth - BBC News
Headings: Busting the attention span myth
Busting the attention span myth
Find out more
'Task-dependent'
'An interesting irony'
Around the BBC

Content: Busting the attention span myth - BBC News
Busting the attention span myth
By Simon Maybin
BBC World Service, More or Less
Published
10 March 2017
Share
close
Share page
Copy link
About sharing
image copyright
Getty Images
You probably won't get to the end of this article. Everyone knows our attention spans are getting shorter. It's just obvious. Or is it? In the always-connected world of social media, smartphones and hyperlinks in the middle of everything you read, it can feel that much harder to stay focused. And there are statistics too. They say that the average attention span is down from 12 seconds in the year 2000 to eight seconds now. That is less than the nine-second attention span of your average goldfish. You might have seen those stats in Time magazine, the Telegraph, the Guardian, USA Today, the New York Times or the National Post. Maybe you heard a Harvard academic citing them on US radio.