The Attention Span of a Goldfish
Are our attention spans now shorter than a goldfish's?
Everyone knows our attention spans are getting shorter. It's just obvious. In the always-connected world of social media, smartphones and hyperlinks in the middle of everything you read, it's become 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's less than the nine-second attention span of your average goldfish.
But the statistics are not all that they seem - and neither is the received wisdom about goldfish.
Producer/Presenter: Simon Maybin
(Image: Shutterstock/Goldfish)
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- Fri 10 Mar 2017 19:50GMTBBC World Service East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa only
- Fri 10 Mar 2017 20:50GMTBBC World Service Online, Americas and the Caribbean, Australasia, Europe and the Middle East & UK DAB/Freeview only
- Fri 10 Mar 2017 21:50GMTBBC World Service East Asia & South Asia only
- Mon 13 Mar 2017 02:50GMTBBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean
- Mon 13 Mar 2017 03:50GMTBBC World Service Online, Europe and the Middle East & UK DAB/Freeview only
- Mon 13 Mar 2017 04:50GMTBBC World Service East Asia & South Asia only
- Mon 13 Mar 2017 05:50GMTBBC World Service Australasia
- Mon 13 Mar 2017 07:50GMTBBC World Service East and Southern Africa & Europe and the Middle East only
Unlock the history and truth behind the data with The OU
Explore how numbers shape, and sometimes mislead us, with The Open University.
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