There’s a persistent rumor that Gen Z have the attention spans of overstimulated goldfish: eight seconds, allegedly. The counter argument is that rather than attention spans shrinking, young people are just sifting through more content than any generation before them. They’ve simply raised their standards. If it doesn’t cut through, they don’t stick around.
Whichever way you read it, we live inside an attention economy. Human attention, once ambient and abundant, is treated as a scarce resource to be chased, hacked, and monetized. Platforms optimize for it. Creators contort themselves for it. Brands spend millions trying to rent it.
