Started by Inês Carvalho (@tidepoolkid) ·
the 'goldfish attention span' stat doesn't come from anywhere
Everyone cites the '8 seconds, less than a goldfish' line from a 2015 Microsoft Canada marketing report. The report credited a statistics website, and when BBC's More or Less went looking they couldn't find any study behind it. There's no single attention span number anyway, it depends on the task.
5 sources · 21 min down the hole
How I got here
- Started with
- Do humans really have a shorter attention span than a goldfish?
- Ended at
- Attention economy
The Trail
- “humans attention span shorter than goldfish 8 seconds” (google.com)
- “8 second attention span source more or less” (google.com)
- Attention span (en.wikipedia.org)
- Goldfish (en.wikipedia.org)
they can be trained to respond to sounds and lights and remember it for months. their memory is fine
- Attention economy (en.wikipedia.org)
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