The attention span of people has absolutely plummeted.
Rather the two or correlated or not though is difficult to say.
"Correlation does not imply causation."
If you take even an entry level college psychology course, they will ram that down your throat so hard it'll feel like you're in a romantic relationship anyway.
Media consumption is a contributor to that.
Media production, being the subtext of media consumption.
Back before the Telecommunications Act in 1996 which deregulated the emergence of the internet within the telecommunications market and the broadcasting market, oldschool media regulation laws from the 1930s and 1940s still largely applied.
Which means that between 1934 and 1996, all broadcasted media outlets in the United States were Federally Regulated.
Deregulation was meant to create internal competition within media markets, allowing for the inevitable development of large-scale ownership, or Media Conglomerates.
Which is why you have instances where Disney owns Discovery Channel, but Disney+ and Discovery+ are paid for separately. And why Instagram got bought out by Meta (Facebook) but Instagram and Meta (Facebook) have different marketing accounts. The same is true of Google and YouTube and their parent company Alphabet.
The snowball effect of deregulation is that it's paradoxically reformed as regulated deregulation, and the average consumer either doesn't know, or doesn't care that they're paying double to the same conglomerates.
Musically, that's why no Independent Artists can break into Billboard.
Because Billboard has long standing affiliate relationships among its conglomerate sector with Sony, Apple, and Paramount, who all collectively own and operate the brunt of mainstream music record industries.
It isn't that Independent Artists aren't allowed into Billboard, it's that Billboards biggest contributor to the Independent Artist section, comes from Disney. So if you DO manage to get your foot in the door, congratulations on getting into Billboard as an Independent Artist, your direct competition is Disney.
If that sounds like it's rigged for business, that's because it IS rigged for business.
Because where did the Mafia go after alcohol prohibition ended?
Everybody knows the Mafia don't just quietly go away and never come back...
But I digress,
The point is, media production is now scientifically designed to be degenerative to the attention span of its consumers.
That started, arguably anywhere between what's musically considered to be Modern Pop Single Song Format, to Facebook digging into Neuroscience in developing their Notification system tailored to Dopamine, or with TikTok's increasingly shorter videos. Pick a card, any card.
So yes, people definitely have less attention span.
People have less attention span because of the media that is produced and consumed.
And it is done that way on purpose in order to be able to herd people around like sheep easier.
Politically speaking, it probably didn't start out that way intentionally.
It probably just gradually snowballed and became that way.
Operationally speaking, you've gotta work with what you've got.
Feds say jump, you jump.
If you can jump to the Moon, the feds don't seem to really care, the point is that you still jumped nevertheless.
(Here's looking at you, @NoxApex(N/A)
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