A Quote by Claire Tomalin

Today's children have very short attention spans because they are being reared on dreadful television programmes which are flickering away in the corner.

Claire Tomalin

Quote Topics

Attention Attention Span Away Because Being Children Corner Dreadful Flickering Programmes Short Short Attention Span Short Attention Spans Television Today Very Which

Quote Author

Claire Tomalin
English - Author
Born: June 20, 1933

We live in a time of short attention spans and long stories. The short attention spans are seen as inevitable, the consequence of living our lives in thrall to flickering streams of information. The long stories are the surprise, as is the persistence of the audience for them.

Tom Junod

I know there is also the influence of television and being able to zap away so it is a weightier decision to go into the theater than it used to be. And probably attention spans are not as strong as they used to be, generally speaking.

Michael Snow

Attention spans are short. Like, eight seconds short. That's why it's necessary to grab people's attention immediately.

John Rampton

Being effective at social media, whether for business or personal use, means capturing people who have short attention spans. They're only a click away from a picture of a funny cat, so you have to make your thing more compelling than that cat. And that can be a high bar.

Alexis Ohanian

Some television programs are made very attractive to young children by presenting short, rapidly moving sequences and ever-changing episodes.... Some experts now argue that slower- paced television fare that allows children time to think about the material is more valuable than the faster-paced programs that merely capture their attention.

Sandra Scarr

Do you know why language manifests itself the way it does in my work? It's because I understand short attention spans.

Barbara Kruger

I was kind of reared by television, but the BBC, it still had that thing - and people are always invoking that kind of Reithian idea - where you could learn stuff from it. If you put a kid in front of a telly now to be reared by that you'd just have a jibbering idiot, you know what I mean? Just adverts for a start. It's almost like the programmes are an afterthought, the real business of this channel is to sell you things and we're just going to space out those announcements with some crap to watch.

Jarvis Cocker

I think there was a sense that the impact was being lost because the audience was so familiar with the form. You combine that with people's attention spans, which are clearly conditioned to be shorter now, and there's a need to vary the paradigm.

Jim Lampley

I almost feel like if I didn't have the gallery and museum content it would be easy to get lost. People's attention spans are so short; they see something and it trends for a few days and then it goes away and something else comes.

Kalup Linzy

The media, the polls and our legislatures fortunately have short attention spans.

John Gutfreund

I'm very conscious of people having pretty short attention spans: I know, I'm guilty of it. I'm 17 now: what happens by the time I'm 21, am I a burn-out or something? Will they still listen to my record?

Lorde

Mid-grade readers don't have short attention spans, they just have low boredom tolerance.

Judith Viorst

The ultimate pitch for an era of short attention spans begins with a single word - and doesn't go any further.

Daniel H. Pink

That's sad too, people cannot do anything that dreadful they cannot do anything very dreadful at all they cannot even remember tomorrow what seemed dreadful today

William Faulkner

Attention spans are changing. It's very noticeable. I am very aware that the kind of books I read in my childhood kids now won't be able to read. I was reading Kipling and PG Wodehouse and Shakespeare at the age of 11. The kind of description and detail I read I would not put in my books. I don't know how much you can fight that because you want children to read. So I pack in excitement and plot and illustrations and have a cliffhanger every chapter. Charles Dickens was doing cliffhangers way back when. But even with all the excitement you have to make children care about the characters.