Fun fact.. this 6 minute article is too long for most people to complete.
If you are familiar with my social media profile you are likely to notice some changes, namely most of my over 700 posts have disappeared.
Furthermore, the content that I now post get only a fraction of the engagement that my previous content received.
So why would I make such a change?
Well, the answer is both simple and complicated.
To sum it up, no matter how much I think I might be helping people by putting out short and easily digestible information curated for social media, I believe that it may be doing more harm than good.
Hear me out on this….
Society is experiencing a precipitous decline in the human attention span and I see social media as contributing to this growing problem.
In my view, social media perpetuates the prioritization of low effort quick-fix solutions and cheap entertainment which is both atrophying the public’s ability to focus, and disincentivizing people from focusing on personal development.
From my observation, social media gives people what they want, not what they need. And what people want is highly stimulating, rapid-fire content with music, fancy editing, quick cuts, bulleted lists, etc.
From the content creator standpoint, the need to capture the audience’s attention within the first 3 seconds of them seeing your post incentivizes inauthenticity and gimmicks that produce quick, but cheap dopamine spikes which keeps the audience engaged.
One may argue that this is just effective communication, but what if we flip the narrative and call it a reflection of society’s thirst for instant gratification over the discomfort associated with having to sit down for more than five minutes and put effort into digesting more detailed and complex information.
The information consumed on social media oftentimes lacks relevant context or depth to truly be of use to those who consume it. It is rare that a “5 steps to X” or “how to do Y in 30 days” post will create real and lasting change in a person’s life. The real benefactor is the content creator who has just hooked his or her audience.
It's not just social media, it’s all forms of internet age tech that connect us. In fact, a mere 10 minutes of scrolling on social media, searching the net, browsing on reddit, swiping on dating apps, and diving into YouTube rabbit holes can expose a person to more people, more information, and more ideas than our prehistoric ancestors would have encountered in their entire lifetimes.
While this may sound good at first thought, I’d argue that it is quite the opposite.
This high volume of shallow exposure is leading to superficial knowledge that is of little practical value, introducing competing narratives, spurring confusion, increasing instances of anxiety and depression, lowered willpower and cognitive abilities, a rising loneliness epidemic, and more…
The human brain was never designed to process this much information. It’s not necessarily the amount of information consumed that’s a problem, but rather the abundance of different sources of stimuli along with the lack of depth or consistency with any particular one.
What the human brain is incredibly good at doing is turning consistent and long-term exposure to information into more efficient neuroconnections that enable a person to achieve superhuman-like knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Unfortunately, this type of exposure is being replaced by the normalization and proliferation of short-format consumption. Now the standard is breadth over depth and the ramifications are severe.
Rapid-fire exposure to highly stimulating short-form content is spurring a mass desensitization of dopamine receptors leading to the need for progressively higher amounts of stimulation to focus one’s attention on any one topic.
Another way of looking at this is that the infinite rush of instantly gratifying content is leading to a mass atrophying of the human attention span.
Furthermore, the nature of social media puts people into a short-form mindset where there is an unrealistic expectation for highly complex topics (including ones that has taken humanity thousands of years to grasp) to be communicated in way that takes little time or effort on the recipients end.
From the abundance of 30-second videos explaining the “10 best exercises to grow a bigger (insert body part of choice),” to the 90-second clips of financial gurus explaining “how to easily flip $1 into $1 million in 6 months,” the current web 2.0 platforms that we spend much of our time on is the epitome of quantity over quality.
However, there is a positive in all of this, which is that YOU can decide to move differently than the masses.
What I’ve learned is that one of the absolute KEY difference makers between those who excel in something and those who fall into a life of mediocrity is the ability to FOCUS.
Focus is not just something that you “do” but rather it is a skill that must be “trained.” It is a learned behavior.
And from my personal experience, one of the first steps to training this skill is to significantly dial back all of the short-form, rapid-fire content that is abundant in our society.
Usually what is considered the norm, or whatever is the easiest thing that even the lowest common denominator in a population can do, is what should NOT be done by someone who wants to challenge the status quo and elevate beyond mediocrity.
First things first, delete or limit social media (I have strategies for doing this if you’d like to know how I do it), avoid short and quick explanations for topics that are of high priority to you.
Getting into better shape, becoming healthier, achieving financial freedom, finding happiness, etc… all of these achievements require your focused attention over a period of time.
Instead, commit to reading actual books, consuming long-form podcasts, meeting people in person or picking up the phone rather than sending them an IM, read blogs and newsletters such as this one.
With time, your brain will switch from being aligned with instant gratification of short-form content to being more balanced, and more capable of overriding the need for the dopamine high that comes with high volumes of short-form information. This opens up space in your mind for ingesting more nuanced and complex information that’ll help you to think more critically, and make sense of the world through a more abstract lens.
When you can turn the abstractness of the world into a comprehendible worldview, you become a multidimensional person. There is a multiplier effect that occurs when all of your dimensions of understanding compound to create learning, skills, understanding, capabilities that extend far beyond the average person.
You become more resistant to being replaced by AI and automation and you differentiate yourself by turning your thoughts, your ideas, your skills into a scarce resource that cannot be easily replicated.
Whether it’s sitting down to read a 5-minute article in its entirety, being fully engaged in a 2-hour podcast, or committing to learning a new skill that requires months of dedicated effort, the ability to override the instant gratification of low effort short-form information condensed into dopamine-inducing 30-second clips is what sets a person apart from the rest.
This is why I have made a conscious decision to drastically scale back my social media posting. While it is a great advertising tool for me, it is terrible for the person consuming it.
By creating a way for me to communicate long-form thought-provoking information directly to those who understand the value of it, I can rid myself of the need to do harm by posting content that fails to provide the actual information and tools that people need to inspire change, and I bypass the algorithms that reward influencers for dumbing down their content for mass appeal.
This is why I’ve shifted my efforts away from social media and am focusing more intently on my writing and engaging directly with members of the UNLEASHING SAVAGE Mastermind Network.
If this resonates with you, and if you also realize that you need to curtail your consumption of short-form content, and spend more time diving deeper into the topics that interest you most, then go ahead and subscribe to THE SAVAGE REPORT newsletter which is my main mechanism for delivering long-format content directly to those who wish to receive it.
And if you are already signed up then share this with someone else who you think this message would resonate with, and lets grow the movement and make attention spans great again.
P.S.
For the brave soles who have made it to the end of this article I have a special treat for you. I assume that reading this article all the way through means that you are 1) interested in this topic and 2) capable of reading longer format text. So here are a few related book recommendations that you might enjoy.
I’ve found these three books to be highly influential in my own journey to self-betterment specifically when it comes to intentionally directing one’s attention to manifest desired life outcomes.
Give them a try and report back to me on what you think!