Can you even read a chart in a report? Another level of lies about attention spans

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by Thais Roberto at the KEYSTONE EDUCATION GROUP on February 8, 2023 titled The first 8 seconds – capturing the attention of Gen Z students. Her third paragraph begins:

 

“Research conducted by Microsoft in 2015 found that the average attention span of Gen Z individuals was only about eight seconds, four seconds less than that of millennials.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But that is complete nonsense. Page 6 of that Microsoft report is shown above, with the numbers of seconds highlighted in red. It mentions neither millennials, nor Gen Z.

 

Also, the source was Statistic Brain, and not Microsoft. I blogged about that on December 30, 2022 in a post titled Shallow research and less curious than hoped.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where else has this new level of nonsense - with Gen Z and millennials been mentioned? One place is by Vineet Arya at Entrepreneur India in an article on June 5, 2019 titled How to not lose attention of Gen Z in the 8 seconds that you have? A second is another article at tradable bits on December 18, 2019 titled How to capture Gen Z’s 8-second attention span through ads. And a third is yet another article by Yehuda Roberts at BrighterDayMh blog on January 9, 2024 titled Average Human Attention Span Statistics.

 

The image of a woman and laptop was modified from one at Wikimedia Commons.