You won’t make it to the end of this article.

by Athena Alipao

LONG FORM

The truth is that you probably won’t make it to the end of this article.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I challenge you to get to the end. But, let’s set some ground rules. You have to read each sentence of this long article word-for-word, no shortcuts whatsoever. Take in every word as you would a full meal, slowly and steadily. Your focus has to be completely directed at the article, so no sneaking peeks at your laptop as you read through this on your phone. At the end of it all, you have to go over what you’ve read in your mind, and that entails taking the time to talk to yourself and identifying specific points that you remember.

Now, if the challenge doesn’t appeal to you, then go right ahead, speedily scroll past the next couple of paragraphs and head over to the last one. But, if you’re up for the test, then read right on. Go and see if you can, indeed, make it to the end.

Let’s be real. We’ve all done it. When we’re scrolling through our newsfeeds on Facebook, amidst the relationship status changes and meticulously planned vacation photos, we often find ourselves gravitating towards a link to an article that catches our eye. Blame it on the clickbait title, the captivating thumbnail, the gripping caption, or whatever it is that got you hooked, but we find ourselves opening up the article in search for some semblance of excitement. At first, the opening sentences prove to be highly appealing to us, and we catch ourselves thinking, ‘hey, this could actually be something good!’

Then, it hits us. The article’s a thousand words long.

The reaction is almost instant. Our fingers click ‘exit’ on that article faster than our minds can process it, and we find ourselves going back to our search for something else to keep us occupied. ‘There are better ways to spend my time,’ you’d think. In the span of time it takes to read that article in full, you argue that you can watch three short videos about dogs rolling around on the grass, like you always do. You can exchange around fifty messages with your close friend from school. You can send out ten live Tweets about a show that everyone’s crazy about.

Because in your perspective, any article that goes over 280 words is tantamount to a novel. And, we constantly make the excuse that we simply don’t have the fitting attention span to finish them.

Have you ever tested yourself to see how long you could concentrate on a particular thing without getting distracted? Say, can you confidently claim that you have read your school textbook for fifteen minutes straight without sparing at least the slightest glance at your phone? How long can you last watching a movie without scrolling through your Instagram newsfeed in the process? Can you manage keeping your full concentration on your class lecturer without thinking about a funny video you’d watched on YouTube just an hour prior? Have you ever stopped to think that maybe the way we use technology and social media has skewed how (and how long) we see the world?

We owe it to three things: immediacy, multitasking, and consumerism.

The digital age has brought on various developments, especially in the realm of technology and communication. But, it has also brought about immediacy. We can send and receive messages from people across the globe within a few seconds, we can open up our preferred internet browser and dig up information we could only otherwise find through an hourlong search in the library, we can learn a lecture’s worth of learnings from a two-minute crash course video, and so much more. Honestly, the possibilities are endless!

Because our social world has been so greatly influenced by this wave of immediacy, anything that does not grant us instant gratification is tossed into the bin labeled ‘a waste of time’. It’s similar to that of a cup of instant noodles. Instant noodles, if anything, bear high risks on one’s health, but why is it that people continue to consume it? Well, it’s easy, tasty, and most of all, fast.

We think to ourselves, ‘why bother waiting thirty minutes to make a fresh batch of noodle soup when I can get more or less the same product in three?’. We often turn a blind eye to the potential harms and sacrificed quality that something could bring in the name of whichever gets the task done quicker, so that we would be able to move on to the next task at hand. To us, speed is equivalent to progress.

With speed comes efficiency. In our eyes, getting a load of tasks done in a short span of time is a telltale sign of maximum productivity, and that applies to the way we use media as well. We are no strangers to a phenomenon called ‘media multitasking’. Rarely do we ever concentrate on just one thing at a time. In fact, you’re probably reading this article on your phone while watching your favorite film through your laptop in the background, all the while trying to read a popular novel on your e-book reader.

Media multitasking is closely linked to a poorer attention span, as it develops the inability to stay with just one device for a stretch of time. Because we’ve conditioned ourselves to perform too many acts at a time, we never really know where to direct our pure and unbothered attention, therefore sacrificing the quality of work that we put out.

Knowing that immediacy and multitasking have weaved themselves into our very nature, it’s important to look at what it means for us. Well, to put it simply, it means ­shorter and quicker.

News pieces, which were previously only released in daily batches by means of newspapers, are now being produced by the minute through live Tweets by news sites, with updates attached to the thread as they happen. Informational articles have been slowly getting replaced by colorful infographics, depicting the general gist of the topic through gripping icons and illustrations. Professions of love between two people can now be packed into a single heart emoji sent from one to the other.

As we adjust to the changing social landscape, so must the content we consume. We, the consumers, continuously search for things that will give us what we need in the least time possible and naturally, the content producers will utilize this in order to promote our interests. Consumerism, in the digital age, has streamlined a way to reshape the way we consume content online. Because we crave short and quick experiences, content producers have started releasing their pieces through means such as Instagram photos with short and sweet captions, fun quizzes on Facebook, interactive polls on Twitter, and more. And, so it’s no wonder to see that our social media timelines are all filled with brief posts and visual accompaniments instead of the traditionally used long-form articles (such as this one).

What does this all mean, then? As our ability to train our focus on a particular thing gets shorter, the content we consume and produce does, too.

And so, at this point, you may have just spent the last three minutes (or three seconds) reading the whole chunk of words right above, and maybe you’re thinking about how the whole article could be summarized into one whole, jam-packed paragraph, or even into some kind of artsy infographic which is, well, fair. However, as in all accomplishments, a congratulatory message is in order. Here’s a big, hearty ‘congratulations’ for reading through 1300+ words!

Welcome to the final paragraph (or hello again, if you’ve followed the whole progression), you’ve officially made it to the end of this article! Before we end things, I only really have one question I’d like to ask: which route did you end up taking to get here?

---

SHORT FORM

You’re probably going to make it to the end of this article.

Let’s keep it short and sweet. Have you ever wondered why the content we see online keeps getting shorter and quicker, almost like a giant pair of scissors has snipped right through them like some sort of filter?

Well, we owe it to three things: immediacy, multitasking, and consumerism.

We crave everything instant – instant messaging, instant updates, instant food even – so much so that if something does not gratify our needs right away, we toss it into the bin in search for something more immediate. With the huge number of technological and digital advancements that provide improved accessibility and ease, things going at slow speeds is not great for productivity.

Productivity, huh? It’s a word that has evolved in terms of its meaning over the years. It used to be defined as simply accomplishing a lot of tasks. But, as of recently, it can also be defined as accomplishing a lot of tasks within a certain amount of time.

The way we see it is that if I can type out my school paper while messaging my friends and watching my favorite TV show, all the while posting vacation pictures on Instagram within the span of fifteen minutes, then that’s maximum productivity. We ‘media multitask’ quite often nowadays that it has shifted how (and for how long) we consume content.

Consumerism has streamlined a way to mold content to suit our, the consumers’, needs and desires. Because we gravitate towards shorter and quicker means of obtaining information and entertainment, producers have catered to this interest in order to sell.

And so, it’s no surprise to see that our social media timelines and feeds are filled to the brim with thirty second videos, short infographics and even shorter articles, and bitesize content.

In this world where everything is made quick and easy, it’s inevitable that media adjusts to this, too.

---

SHORTEST FORM