Podcast – Netflix, streaming… Have we lost our attention span? – rts.ch

Netflix has recently offered categories of short films “for those who don’t have time”. There is also the possibility to watch or listen to content in fast forward, on most streaming platforms, Youtube or Spotify. Have we lost some of our attention span?

“Our attentional capacity, which depends on our brain, has not diminished. It will increase during our childhood, decrease with aging, or if we have a shock or a brain injury. But what has changed, it is the solicitation that we make of this attention: it finds itself scattered, dispersed, shared, which means that each content only receives a small part of it”, explains Valérie Camos, professor of developmental psychology at the University of Fribourg, in Le Point J.

We still have the same attentional capacity, but we disperse it instead of keeping it on a single object.

Have we become unable to focus on a two hour film? Why do we often feel the need to type on our phone while watching or listening to other content?

Faced with the plethora of online content, especially on streaming platforms, the specialist evokes a “jumping movement” of our attention, which can become harmful, because we get used to it. “Some people even start to get bored when they’re watching programs, so they hit the fast forward button because they think it’s going too slow,” she says.

Are multimedia contents now designed to adapt to this “jumping” attention?

>> Listen to the full episode:

Jessica Vial and the Point J team

–