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With everything bubbled down to “easy-to-consume” content it has become necessary to get ourselves and ideas across as efficiently as possible.

From a young age, we have been told repeatedly about the death of attention spans. It has been instilled in our brains time and time again that we are simple-minded, easily entertained, and lack the patience to simply wait and be content.

This has, like many other things, been justifiably traced back to social media and the prevalence of short videos and clips that have caused a demand for quick, attention-catching, funny, and entertaining videos done within a short amount of time so as to continue to consume as much content as possible. However, I don’t think it’s fair to attribute what can be seen as a deeper societal issue within our cultural context to one cause. After all, we are a product of our environment, and our environment is one that deeply values time.

From the repetition of the ideals that “time is money” and that we need to maximize every possible opportunity and moment came the idea that we could also simplify and condense our entertainment. What started as weekly family visits to the cinema turned into the typical American half-hour sitcoms. And those sitcoms fell victim to the same trend with the rise of social media platforms like YouTube and Vine, which were able to capitalize on quick, attention-catching videos that maximized entertainment while minimizing time and effort.

With the existence of these quick, less-than-a-minute videos, the time the video has to draw in the viewer has also decreased, and we have reached the point where we often decide if we want to view the video or not in less than a second. Take scrolling on TikTok or Instagram Reels, for example. There have been many times where I’ve sat down scrolling through my For You Page and went back to revisit a video that I saw by scrolling back up, and a video that I had just watched would already be ten scrolls back. I’m often not even aware of what makes me skip a video so quickly or decide to watch it, but we consume content at such a quick rate and to such a large extent that the need for attention-grabbers has become more important than ever.

Despite the ever-popular saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” the truth is that with the prevalence of hundreds of outlets for content consumption and entertainment and a society with a dwindling attention span, we often take things at face value. If we scroll onto a video that doesn’t catch our attention within the first frame, we move past it, if we see a book with a bland cover, it is discarded from our mind, and if we meet someone whose initial traits or values don’t align or mesh with our own, we disregard them.

It has gotten to a point where we are not only marketing our ideas, but ourselves.

This idea of condensing ourselves to an aesthetic, our most appealing traits, and things that will make us appealing to others is found everywhere, one of the most common places being dating apps. Just like scrolling through social media feeds, we created the option to scroll through people, picking and disregarding who we like and don’t like within seconds. However, these ideas aren’t only within dating apps and spheres of the internet; we carry these practices into real life.

Without being forced to take time to know people, we judge them based on initial reactions, leading to everyone boiling themselves down to what they believe is most desirable and wanted by others, which are often extremes. These extremes and the need to condense ourselves to accommodate short attention spans are due to our rapidly radicalizing culture that forces us to execute and present ideals, traits, and personality that attract other people quickly, so as not to lose the attention and focus of the person or demographic we are attempting to appeal to.

Outside of social media and day-to-day interactions, this extreme radicalization and simplification of values and character are found most often in politics. Political candidates are condensed down to their key policies and beliefs that are believed to be the most appealing to their intended demographic to attract voters based on initial responses. Due to short attention spans and the lack of desire for further education, these initial responses can be the entirety of what a voter bases their decision upon.

“Constant consumption:” This is the term that often comes to mind in our current culture. Everything surrounding us, from social media to advertisements to politics and even to people, has been condensed into an easy-to-consume, no-thought-required basis, something that reflects a period of escapism we are in. But reducing our ideas and ourselves into the easy-to-consume versions makes us shallow; we lose the depth that is inherently human.

Our currency is attention. The best thing that we can offer people is our time, and it is this attention reduction that is pushing us into a thoughtless world where nothing beyond a cursory glance is necessary.

We need to slow down.

An idea that seems impossible given where we are and where we’ve come from, where we hope to move toward, but I believe it is possible. We need to give things a look beyond a cursory glance.

Look beyond the cover of a book and read the synopsis, watch the first few seconds of a video rather than scrolling after it doesn’t catch our attention in the first frame, research and remain aware of our environment and current events, and give people a chance beyond a simplified version of themselves that we are initially presented. If we achieve these things, we may just discover that there is a whole lot more to the world than easy entertainment and that things that require deeper thinking are just what we need.

We need to give our ideas, other people, and ourselves the time that they deserve.