Honestly I don't want this to be a boomer ass take but my bet would be it's easier for people to consume than looking up the plot and then reading it, a lot of media consumption is just geared towards a vague understanding of the plot of a film given how over abundant media is. Imagine telling the newest gen of kids that yeah there's the extended cuts of the LOTR trilogy which is a cumulative 7-8 or so hours of film you have to sit through, I don't think current attention spans could take it.

[–] DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Kids can sit down and watch 7-8 hours of streaming content though. I don't think it's neccessarily that kid's attention spans are completely broken, rather that they have so many things constantly vying for their attention that they dismiss content more easily because they've always known an abundance of media. A starving person won't turn away any sort of food, but someone who has never been hungry can refuse to eat something for the shallowest of reasons. Or something.

[–] Bloobish@hexbear.net 2 points 5 months ago

I'd say that's true, but also that many including myself put streaming vids and other such content in the background to create a secondary noise while we multitask on something else with brief moments of engagement. Also gotta say short form content that gets the message across far quicker than long form essays as well (Tiktok for instance has been pretty great at creating lots of short form leftist content to help inform). Still there's just a part of me that wonders whether some of the blame can be laid at the feet of new media formats and distributes wanting quicker higher engagement content, and how this isn't fostering healthy attention spans.