Entertain or Die: The Myth of the Short Attention Span

It's always hard to get, and hold, an audience's attention. And it always has been. Which is why we periodically see articles whining about short attention spans– this latest from The Atlantic. As the article points out, it's possible that videos are affecting our attention spans, but hard to be sure.

This is not where I come down in favor of spending your entire day watching TikTok. But I will point out that complaining about our dire shortening attention spans is a tradition that may date back thousands of years ("This damn writing is making it impossible for today's kids to speak long stories!") But in our modern era, it's at least 50 years old.

In a 1979 New York Times article, critics alleged that Sesame Street shortened kids' attention spans. A decade or so later, in the early 1990s, Short Attention Span Theater built an entire tv show (yes, irony!) around that premise, with fast-moving sketch comedy.

Note here that the smartphone didn't exist until a decade and a half after that, and that video-on-phones did not become truly functional until the latter part of the 20-oughts.

So to those trying to balance the competing ideas that "short video rots our brains" and that one of the two biggest films of 2026, The Odyssey, is just shy of three hours long, I offer an alternative thesis:

We only watch what we like, and we stop paying attention to what we don't. We don't have an "attention span" problem so much as a "supply and demand" problem

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The Supply Problem

There are billions of videos available to you at the touch of a button on the pocket computer you carry around 24/7. Choice is almost literally unlimited. And so we humans have to choose what to watch tens or hundreds of times a day.

It's not that our attention spans are getting shorter. It's that our supply of choices has gotten so much wider. If we didn't learn to decide fast, we'd drown. To a researcher, that six seconds it takes you to decide not to watch a video looks like short attention span. But really, you've just developed great video-dumping skills.

Your phone isn't like a movie theater– you didn't drive there, buy popcorn, spend money on a ticket. You lose nothing if you "walk out" on a video. On your phone, the cost of exiting a video is zero.

Nobody can force someone else to watch a video. If it isn't up to our standards, doesn't take us on a journey, doesn't intrigue us, we click away.

The lesson for those of us who make videos: Make them well or nobody will see them.

The Demand Problem

Video demands our time and attention. There are only 1,440 minutes in the day. If you expect the audience to show up, you have to give them something they think is worth the trade.

Audiences demand quality. And also: They decide what quality is. If you offer something great, they'll stay. If you offer something less great, they're gone. Even if the video is "important", even if it's a cute child, even if you think it's funny. The viewer owns the controls, and responds to the demands on their time.

Would you rather watch a three-minute marketing video or the three-hour long RRR*? Ten minutes of kindergarten graduation or forty minutes of Widow's Bay? An HR seminar or The Odyssey?

Entertain or Die

It's not that the audience has no attention span. It's that they have no attention span for things they don't want to watch. They have unlimited attention span for the good stuff.

If you're making video today, now more than ever it's "Entertain or die"– if your video's not good, it's gone. If you don't entertain the audience, they won't watch. Not your home movie. Not your marketing video. Not your video promoting some really important political thing or a great charity.

Anybody can use SEO or a tricky intro to get them to see the first few seconds of your video. The real question is how to you develop the skills to get them to watch the rest?

*If you have not watched the insanely entertaining RRR, you must. Three hours is long, I know, but tell yourself you will watch part of it now, and maybe part of it later if you like it. You will watch the whole thing in one sitting. I loved The Odyssey too, but odds are you've heard of it.