Got a minute? Global attention span is narrowing, study reveals

Research combed from everything from movie tickets to social media finds more to focus on but less time to do soIt ’s just as you suspected; the information age has changed the general attention span. A recently published study from researchers at the Technical University of Denmarksuggests the collective global attention span is narrowing due to the amount of information that is presented to the public. Released on Monday in the scientific journal Nature Communications, the study shows people now have more things to focus on – but often focus on things for short periods of time.The researchers studied several modes of media attention, gathered from several different sources, including (but not limited to): the past 40 years in movie ticket sales; Google books for 100 years; and more modernly, 2013 to 2016 Twitter data; 2010 to 2018 Google Trends; 2010 to 2015 Reddit trends; and 2012 to 2017 Wikipedia attention time. The researchers then created a mathematical model to predict three factors: the “hotness” of the topic, its progression throughout time in the public sphere and the desire for a new topic, said Dr Philipp Hövel, an applied mathematics professor of University College Cork in Ireland.Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Society Social media Science Digital media Technology Psychology Source Type: news