I'm Sorry I Wasn't Listening: 5 Signs Our Attention Spans Are Waning

Since I have begun to contribute to Yahoo, or at least I have written articles which are being ignored by Yahoo.  I was forced to read the submission guidelines for Yahoo contributors.  They state very clearly:

"Online attention spans are short. For most topics, the ideal article length is 350 to 500 words."

In an effort to meet with the guidelines I will now be counting every word I compose in order to meet these standards so that more people may be exposed to the darkside of sales.  I suppose if I were an angry bartender more people would read my post but I'm just a sarcastic sales person so no one cares.  Clearly I am being too wordy even right now and as I noted in my last article we have the attention span of small children eating pixie sticks, so I must be brief.  Listed below are 5 signs that everyone's attention span is waning.  Please consider that this applies to all generations, not just the new millennials. We are all losing are ability to focus.

1. Books Are Written Like Movies - In order for young authors to be heard, they are taking advantage of new mediums and a younger audience.  Let's face it, there is no great American novelist out there, and if there is, no one is reading her work.  Books are being written almost exclusively like movies, with development, conflict, big action scenes and great endings.  The only thing missing is the CGI effects.  No one will ever write another "Ulysses" and if they did, I wouldn't read it, because that damn book was long and confusing.
2. Newspapers Are Dinosaurs - No one would argue the fact that newspapers, and good journalism are on there way out of the public consciousness.  Why?  We don't want to bother turning a page when we could just swipe our fingers, and we certainly don't want to wade through big words like "reconciliation" or "disenfranchised".  Even e newspapers aren't popular because no one wants to focus on an article for more than a minute.  Instead, we get all our news in snippets online, and even then we never delve into the articles. 
3. Technology, Technology, Technology - I can remember when the iPod first was introduced, and we were so excited about the idea of carrying our music with us.  Heck, now we can watch movies, listen to music, and video chat on our phones.  We are so distracted by technology there's no need to talk to each other, instead we text.  We even text in the car because we might become bored for a few minutes, and actually have to think for ourselves.  But we don't really communicate we commiserate.
4. Information Overload - We are bombarded with information on a daily basis, and it is getting more and more difficult to disseminate all of the useless information.  In fact, it seems easier not to think and just focus on positive things.  For example, should you read about the crisis in Gaza, or look at those adorable pictures of dog's with bee stings.  The easier choice is the doggies.
5. More Choices, Choices, Choices - 25 years ago there were only 4 television networks, and Fox was a new player in the market.  Now we have over 300 channels to choose from and over 500 options including on demand, sports etc. In addition we have video games that are incredibly realistic and thousands and thousand of apps to distract us from the daily grind.  It's impossible for our brains to absorb all of the information therefore we watch what we can at an alarming rate, and we filter out a lot of media choices.  We have to,  or we'd go crazy trying to absorb it all....Wait what was I writing about?

As there are more and more people populating this earth, we are becoming one big human race, all communicating, all commiserating, and hopefully we can keep our attention long enough to listen to each other. Damn I went over the allotted number of words! Hope you made it to the end.

Have a great day!

-M