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 19:50GMT91福利社 World Service East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa only
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- Mon 13 Mar 2017 04:50GMT91福利社 World Service East Asia & South Asia only
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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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91福利社 Ideas discovers three easy ways to help make sense of statistics.
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