At some point, roundabout the time Atari was all the rage, we started getting this notion that our attention spans were shrinking. They had to be, right? We were getting our news in evening TV soundbites more than multi-paragraph newsprint, the movies were all of a sudden full of jump cuts, and what about the music videos, huh? We could barely focus our eyes on Michael Jackson's fedora before it was onto his sparkly socks, and those flashing sidewalk squares.

It became such common wisdom that we didn't even seem to notice when kids started reading 300-page novels about boy wizards and girls in love with vampires and werewolves. And even when those 300-page novels turned into 700-page novels and epic, multi-part film sagas, and three-hour films took home all the Oscars (and all the box office), and then sold millions more when released in extended director's cut DVDs.
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The latest research paints an even more dramatic picture of this supposed decline. Studies from 2024-2025 show that the average human attention span has dropped to just 8.25 seconds—shorter than the 9-second attention span of a goldfish. Computer scientists and psychologists studying attention spans for about 20 years have found that the average time a person can focus on one thing has dropped from around 2½ minutes to around 45 seconds.

Except of course not.

Style changed as technology did; those jump cuts had more to do with digital editing than anything else, and though we have certainly had more to pay attention to in the past 30 years than we had in the previous 30, when something's good, or important, when something is a revelation, or funny, or sexy, or changes our minds, or even credibly challenges our thinking, we pay attention.

It's a high bar, of course, but no higher than it's ever been. We've never paid attention to crap; and we've always paid attention to the good stuff. This just means that your copy needs to be good, using all the tools that writers have in their kits, like humour and vivid adjectives, varying sentence length, grab-me openers and killer kickers.

We've been hearing about the death of text for about as long as we've been hearing this specious stuff about our attention spans. And yet the rise in popularity of Substack shows that when text is good, we can spend hours with it at a time.

This doesn't mean it needs to be big blocks of text. There are ways to get your in-depth message across – headlines, tables of contents, graphics and graphs, sidebars and background colour – but if you do want to get your message across, it seems longer is not only OK, it's actually better.

Recent studies continue to support this counterintuitive finding. Research from 2024 indicates that blog posts of approximately 1,600 words maximize engagement, with some studies recommending even more substantial content—around 2,100 words for optimal reader attention. HubSpot's latest analytical results advocate for an ideal range of 2,250 to 2,500 words to maximize blog post success.

The data on content performance tells a compelling story. Posts extending beyond 1,500 words consistently outperform shorter posts in terms of social media interactions. For SEO success in 2025, quality and relevance matter more than sheer word count, with search algorithms now rewarding content that aligns with searcher needs rather than favouring longer posts by default.

What's particularly interesting is how different platforms are adapting to this reality. Pinterest engagement has grown significantly from 3.08% in January 2024 to 5.26% in January 2025, largely because it's a search-driven platform where users actively seek out content rather than passively scrolling. LinkedIn's median engagement rate rose from 6.00% in January 2024 to 8.01% in January 2025, benefiting from less content saturation and an algorithm that rewards conversations.

Even in the age of supposed shortened attention spans, platforms are recognizing the value of substance. In 2025, long-form content continues to generate long-term visibility and engagement, with Google preferring content that answers questions in depth and anticipates what users would search for next.

So don't worry if it's taking more than 1,000 words to get your message across. Just get a writer who knows what she's doing, and take that deep dive.

(Oh, and those attention span studies that compared us unfavorably with goldfish? While the statistics are widely cited, experts note the complexity of measuring attention spans and acknowledge that we can maintain focus much longer when content is genuinely engaging or personally relevant. The myth persists, but the evidence for meaningful engagement with quality content continues to mount.) ■