Some striking yet true statistics about our quickly diminishing attention span:
“The addictive nature of the web can leave you with an attention span of nine seconds, the same as a goldfish”.
(BBC, 2002).
“The average length of the 12 billion videos US Internet users consumed via the web in May is just 2.7 minutes”.
(Catone, 2008).
Web usability consultant Jakob Nielson found that the more words you add to a page, the more people skim it. (Catone, 2008).
“Web pages are viewed for ten seconds or less. Fewer than one in ten page views extend beyond two minutes, an a significant amount of those seem to involve ‘unattended browser windows … left open in the background of a desktop.’"
(Carr, 2008) The Shallows
Bibliography
1. Catone, Josh. "What the Heck Happened to Our Attention Spans?" SitePoint » Web Design, Web Development, Freelancing, Tech News and More. 25 July 2008. Web. 10 May 2011.
2. Carr, Nicholas G. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Print.
