If Ted Talks are getting shorter, what does that say about our attention spans?

The Guardian

27-05-2025

Name: Ted Talks
Age: Ted started in 1984.
And has Ted been talking ever since? Ted – short for Technology, Entertainment, Design – is an American-Canadian non-profit media organisation that has an annual conference …
I know, and they do the inspirational online talks. Correct, under the slogan 'Ideas change everything'.
Anyway, what about them? They're shorter.
The talks? Than what? Than before.
How much shorter? Six minutes.
Says who? Says Elif Shafak.
The Turkish-British novelist? Novelist, essayist, public speaker, activist. She was talking at the Hay festival, in Wales.
What did she say? That when she first did a Ted Talk she was given a limit of 19 minutes, but a decade later she was told to keep it to a trim 13.
Why? That's what she asked Ted.
And Ted said? According to Shafak, TED said: 'Well, the world's average attention span has shrunk.'
How did that make her feel? 'Really sad. We are incapable of listening to a talk for more than a few minutes.' She went on to say that it was because we are living 'in an age of hyper-information'.
Too much to take in? Exactly. 'We cannot process this much information,' she continued. 'And in the long run it makes us tired, demoralised, then numb because we stop caring.'
My god, sounds terminal. Is it true, that our attention spans have shrunk? A lack of long-term studies means we don't know for sure, but the public seems to think it has.
Tell me more. But get on with it. A study by King's College London in 2022 found that 49% of people believe their attention spans have become shorter, 50% say they can't stop checking their phones …
Young people probably. Nope. Also a struggle for the middle-aged. And 50% of people also believed – wrongly – that the average attention span for adults today is just eight seconds.
Sorry, what were we talking about again? Short attention spans.
Oh yes. I knew that. What about books though, are they getting shorter too? Well, interestingly, a 2015 study suggested the opposite, that they were 25% longer than they were 15 years earlier.
I'm sensing there's a but coming. But the longlist for this year's International Booker includes eight books that are less than 200 pages.
What about films, they're definitely getting longer, right? The short answer: no. Slightly longer answer: again, we just think they are, probably because of marketing. Studios want to incentivise people to spend money on a ticket, which they do by telling you it's big, epic and special.
Hang on, so we think attention is going down but it might not be, and films are getting longer, but they're not? Very perceptive. Someone should do a Ted Talk about it.
Do say: 'Can you even change everything in 13 minutes?'
Don't say: 'Hurry up, you're losing the room.'