The Short Attention Span Of Americans

I was browsing through some of the different news stories on Fox News and came across an article that has really gotten me thinking. And it’s not even a story about news, but rather about how the news is covered. It makes me wonder just how much Americans are really paying attention to their world and what is going on around them. It also makes me concerned about our chances to turn America around from traveling the direction it is traveling. I think that wonder and concern are both merited.

We live in a fast-moving era of information. Many people are satisfied to tweet about their outrage on any given topic on Twitter. Many people are satisfied with sharing a picture or a headline about a given topic on Facebook. Chances are, the sharing of that picture or headline is as far as their outrage goes. A lot of us rant and rave in the comment section, but little is actually accomplished to change what is going on. I even wonder sometimes why I even attempt to write on this blog. Here is what Howard Kurtz has to say about it.

Fox News – The outrage industry is now stuck on fast-forward.

And that may be helping President Obama.

It’s no secret that the media world can go haywire faster than ever before, driven in part by Twitter and cable news segments that thrive on hot-button debates over breaking developments.

But these angry episodes tend to burn themselves out faster as the hunger grows for new and novel outrages to boost ratings and clicks.

Obama made a related point in his “Daily Show” interview, saying the media get “distracted to shiny objects and doesn’t always focus on the big tough choices and decisions.”

Since “we operate in sound bites” and no one is going to do an “hourlong special on urban America,” he told Jon Stewart, it’s “tough to get everyone focused” on a big issue.

That makes it hard for any White House to build a case. And it helps explain why Obama is talking to Buzzfeed and Vox and YouTubers and a podcast run out of some guy’s garage (where he famously cited the N-word).

But it also means that this president, widely dismissed by the press as a lame duck, is outlasting his opposition on a whole series of issues.

Stop for a moment and think about it. Some of our conservative leaders have tried to make an issue of what happened in Benghazi. The story held traction for a while, but then it was as if most people just moved on to a different story. Legitimate questions were asked, but no real answers were given. And after a while, the story simply ran out of steam.

Howard Kurtz points out several issues that many of us feel strongly about. Obama’s executive order to halt deportations and the recent ludicrous rulings by the Supreme Court, just to name two of them. Those two stories are about real and serious issues facing our country, yet it seems the media has just moved on to the next “big and better” story.

It would be easy to blame the media for this trend of fast-moving news and social media. While it is true that they share part of the blame, it should not rest entirely on their shoulders. Why do you think they are so swift to move from one story to the next, without really covering any particular issue with substance that would maybe make us all sit up and take notice? Because they are following our lead and know full well most of us will not be paying attention for much longer than it takes us to read or scan a headline.

The attention span of Americans for real news and information is going with the wind, ever-changing and wafting in a different direction almost every minute. Is it any wonder we have suffered through almost eight years of the worst presidency in American history? Given that far too many of us are really not paying attention, I think it’s about what we should expect.