Short Listening Spans: The Lost Art of Conversation in the Social Media Age?
Our world is rich with distractions – maybe too rich. It used to be TV, now blame is more often focused on social media. Many people find it difficult to focus on reading a book or even an email, or writing a letter, email, blog, or paper, or for that matter, to have a focused conversation. Is this the case? Is it just a function of our economies of attention or also a possible decline in our ability and skills in communication? Why converse if you can chat online? Why write if you can use AI?
After defending social media for years, I do worry whether social media are partly to blame. It is not among the more common threats assigned to social media, such as around child safety.[i] It is whether social media are contributing to shorter attention spans and an erosion of deep, meaningful conversations. Is it reshaping the nature of communication itself.
One explanation could be the degradation of basic literacy skills, as people increasingly use quick, shorthand responses, emojis, and icons rather than writing full sentences or engaging in thoughtful conversations. This shift can degrade skills such as spelling, grammar, and sentence structure. Social media platforms, with their focus on brevity (such as Twitter’s character limit), encourage short, often vague responses that make it harder to have serious, focused discussions.
This is a problem if people use social media as a substitute versus a complement to interpersonal communication. If people use the internet and social media to substitute easier options for putting pen to paper, or drafting a text, or expressing themselves, they might well degrade their ‘penmanship’ [remember that word], their ability to spell words and compose sentences, and put them together. If you look at the comments – and the posts – on such social media as X, formerly known as Twitter, you’ll see my point.
Social media can and usually does supplement the occasional phone call, letter, or face-to-face conversation, helping you keep in touch with friends, family, and colleagues. However, it can also substitute in several ways. Instead of commenting on a person’s post or photo, you might simply press ‘like’. You may start using icons rather than words. Instead of writing a blog, you might simply do a video message on WhatsApp. Instead of speaking to a colleague sitting right next to you, you communicate online.
What about the quality of conversations? I personally find it difficult to maintain long-form conversations in real life, as so many people are conditioned by the fast-paced nature of online interactions. When I attempt a conversation, I find interruptions and quick shifts in topic leading to fragmented dialogues. Might this reflect a broader cultural trend influenced by social media, where users expect immediate, bite-sized answers and responses.
Many more threats have been attributed to social media, but my main worry is that that it is becoming increasingly difficult to have a serious conversation with someone. Perhaps I am the problem, such as becoming more long-winded with age. However, even when someone asks me a question, I am often only beginning my attempt to answer when they interrupt, such as providing their own response, or someone else chimes in with their opinion, or they ask a completely different question.
Why?
On social media we often have many connections – maybe too many. We divide our time over an ever-increasing number of people and comments. Moreover, most social media applications encourage short responses.[ii]
I sometimes wonder if this problem occurs when you confront different patterns of thought. I am generally a convergent thinker, wanting to follow a point to a clear conclusion. But I often feel like I am communicating with a divergent thinker, whose mind bounces off your first words to another topic, possibly stimulated by something you said.
Some pundits have attributed a rise of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to the use of social media. This might well contribute to an inability to listen, for example. But I fear this diagnosis could simply through this problem into the long grass of a medical or psychological problem. It might be much simpler – an issue of awareness. People may not realise they are not taking the time to listen. They expect an immediate and very short response – because that is what they see and are becoming accustomed to online.
Whether social media or other changes in the way we do things are to blame, we do seem confronted with short attention spans, or possible a more general cultural shift towards quick, superficial exchanges, a pattern that might be reinforced by social media.
Let me suggest several strategies to respond to this:
- Interrupt – Assertively ask for the space to finish your point. Increasingly, I’ve given up saying: ‘Hold on, I haven’t answered your question.’ If they were listening, they must know that I haven’t had a chance to answer.
- Let it go – If someone isn’t listening, don’t waste energy trying to complete your thought. Sometimes the best response is not to respond. When you are a convergent thinker speaking with a divergent thinker, or vice versa, this might be the best strategy.
- Be brief – Start with short, snappy responses to fit the culture of quick interactions. The problem with this approach is that you are giving in to the cultural shift to ever briefer, catchy, glib, and ambiguous responses.
- Blog about it – For more thoughtful reflections, the author prefers taking the questions home and writing blogs, where they can present their ideas without interruption.
Of course, blogging is giving up on the conversation. That said, in a blog, I can provide a context, say what I want to say, and I have no idea whether anyone really reads it or not. It is off my mind, but I rest assured that an imaginary reader somewhere in the world reading and appreciating it, maybe finding it stimulating their own thoughts on the issue.
I should add that I have been on the other side of this issue. As an Oxford academic, I have had some brilliant colleagues who can and often did spend hours answering what I thought as a simple question. Perhaps I am too often a bore or too often use a question as an invitation to deliver a lecture. But I try to be concise, if not always successful.
While I have experienced both ends of the spectrum—long, deep academic conversations and the increasingly fragmented nature of social media discussions—I am more concerned with the decline of focused, uninterrupted dialogue in everyday life and the cultural shift toward rapid, shallow exchanges. More training and education in basic literacy should include conversational skills, for which there are a growing number of training courses. But in the short term, I hope my strategies are of some use, if only to raise awareness of the value and etiquette of listening and conversing in the age of social and related digital media and also help you think about what can be done.
[i] The most common fear is around child safety, the concern that children and people in general will meet bad people on social media. In fact, most people communicate online with people they know, or have or will meet in person, such as in speaking with someone before a face-to-face meeting. But people do meet new people online and most often this is a good thing – you find people with common interests. If you are into extreme ironing, then you need to go online to meet others with your interests. When I was growing up in the Midwest of the USA, my parents would constantly warn me not to speak with strangers or get in a stranger’s car. Meeting online is safer, but the same warning should be conveyed to your children and family.
[ii] The former Twitter limited the number of characters in a post. Some thought this was a virtue as it forced us to make our points more concisely, but that is a very romantic idea. More often you read vague and incomprehensible points, such as an expletive or an icon. Many apps will tell you how long a post will take to read or listen to, so if you see more than a couple of minutes, then you think twice before committing your precious time to that post. Am I imagining this, or is this a response to my long-winded answers?