It usually begins as a harmless swipe. You pick up your phone to check one message, and suddenly you’re three videos deep into a reel you don’t even remember tapping on. Your tea has gone cold, the task you meant to start is still untouched, and you’re left wondering how those thirty seconds disappeared without your permission. It’s a strange new reflex of modern life, one where our thumbs have acted faster than our minds, and our attention has dissolved before we even realise it’s been taken.
That disappearance has not been imagined. Research from Microsoft, later consolidated by Amra and Elma, has shown that human attention has declined from 12 seconds in 2000 to about 8.25 seconds in 2025, making it, as multiple reports have described, “shorter than that of a goldfish.” Media has reported that focused screen attention has fallen from 2.5 minutes in 2004 to under 47 seconds today, a nosedive accelerated by platforms that reward compulsive re-engagement over patient absorption.
When asked Nitin Burman, Group Chief Revenue Officer at Balaji Telefilms how he sees today’s viewer, he answered with a kind of blunt realism: “The attention span is going lower every day. If the first five or six seconds are not interesting, people skip. They move on without thinking about it.” He has watched viewers abandon content “in less than three seconds” if the hook fails. And he has dismissed the idea that this is a generational issue. “It is not Gen Z or Gen Alpha,” he said. “It is technology and cheap data. If one GB still cost fifty rupees, we wouldn’t be watching hours of content. We watch because we can.”
Saurabh Srivastava, COO – Digital Business at Shemaroo Entertainment, has taken the long view, tracing this change through two decades of behavioural studies. “There are scientific studies that show how attention spans have been declining for twenty years,” he said, “and it has accelerated with digital media. Platforms are designed to gratify you quickly, to trigger dopamine, and that changes behaviour.” His favourite evidence sits on a platform once known for long videos: “YouTube was built for long form, but since Shorts launched, short form has skyrocketed. In many categories, Shorts views have overtaken long videos.”
At the same time, he has emphasised that this doesn’t automatically kill long form. “People are expanding their total screen time,” he said. “Short form is growing, but long form hasn’t dropped for us. The rise of short form is coming from discretionary minutes that earlier went to reading a magazine or doing something else entirely.”
But in marketing, Srivastava has argued, the collapse of attention is far more brutal. “Reach is not attention,” he said. “We’ve been saying this for twenty years, but now we feel it every day. You’re competing with everything, with multiple screens, multiple notifications. You have to design communication that fits this fragmenting attention, or it disappears in the scroll.”
Burman echoed this unflinchingly. “Everyone wants maximum eyeballs,” he said. “You can skip an ad in five seconds. That is why the first five seconds have become everything.” Even in trailers, he added, “If the promo doesn’t grab attention in one minute, the audience will not watch your show or movie.”
That urgency has transformed the craft of storytelling. Srivastava has explained that an episode’s fate is often sealed within minutes. “The first five or six minutes have become crucial,” he said. “You can’t have a slow burn beginning anymore. You have to offer some kind of reward early, a sense of what the viewer is getting into.” This shift has blurred once-rigid boundaries. “Movies were fast, TV was slow,” he reflected. “Now web series have adopted cinematic pacing. Everything has merged because everybody wants to satisfy a user who expects pace.”
Adnan Pocketwala, Growth Partner at Ormax WhatNext has added a psychological layer to the conversation, the distinction between passive and active attention. “Attention span matters only when someone is a passive recipient,” he said. “If I’m actively interested, I can watch five hours. If I’m passive, then yes, attention span becomes a problem.” He has long relied on a simple test to identify a truly successful ad: “When someone watches your ad and says, ‘Ek baar aur dikhao na,’ you know it works. It means the ad has taken them somewhere emotionally.”
GM and Head of Marketing of MagicHomes, Jayesh Sali has approached the issue from a brand lens but described the same behavioural pattern. “Attention span has dropped to around five to six seconds,” he said, citing recent studies. “People don’t go beyond that on outdoor or social media. But if you give them something truly creative, truly emotional, they will stay even for seven minutes. We’ve seen that.”
This paradox, that people flee shallow content in seconds but stay rooted in deep content if emotionally compelled, has defined the modern viewer. And it has dictated a new kind of creative discipline. Srivastava said that brands have stopped retrofitting long ads into short formats. “Earlier we used to cut a 30-second ad to 20,” he said. “Now the idea itself is conceived for six or ten seconds.” Yet he’s quick to underline that monetisation still belongs to long storytelling. “On YouTube, on TV, on OTT, long format drives revenue,” he said. “Short form consumption is far ahead of monetisation. In the long form, both money and creative inspiration still sit.”
Research mirrors this dichotomy. SQ Magazine has reported that videos under fifteen seconds perform disproportionately well on completion. Panoptica.ai has observed that Gen Z toggles between apps every forty to sixty seconds, fracturing their cognitive stability. Media has reported that frequent social media use in children correlates strongly with inattention symptoms, and The Times has noted a rise in attention-related issues linked to constant digital stimulation.
Yet creators have not treated this as a crisis alone but as an opportunity. “Microdramas have come from this behavioural shift,” Srivastava said. “People want bite-sized drama. They want convenience. They want gratification quickly.” At Balaji, Burman has described how cliffhangers at the thirty-second mark have become essential design. “If your cliffhanger is not strong enough, they won’t watch episode two,” he said.
Looking ahead, Srivastava has imagined a future where a single story exists in three shapes. “Stories will be conceived for a movie, a web series and a microdrama from the very beginning,” he said. “Different attention cohorts need different formats. One plot will have to live across three lives.”
But the real cost of shrinking attention, he has warned, is not in the media but society. “Short attention spans are a bigger challenge for learning,” he said. “Reading suffers. Problem-solving suffers. These are deeper concerns than entertainment.” Media reports have echoed this, linking digital distraction with classroom struggles and rising inattention.
Still, long stories survive when they deserve to. Sali recalled a seven-minute Facebook film from the pandemic. “You don’t realise it is seven minutes because it is so emotional,” he said. “If the story is powerful, people won’t mind the length.”
And that may be the truth that sits beneath all the panic. Attention hasn’t died; it has become conditional. It has become something to be earned, not assumed. It has become, as Srivastava said, “something to be invited, moment by moment.”
In an age where reports show that focused attention lasts less than forty-seven seconds, the invitation has become the art, and the art has never mattered more.
