I saw a joke on Twitter recently, shortly after the change to allow 280 character Tweets was rolled out to all users (double the traditional 140). It said that wouldn’t it be great if Twitter kept on incrementally doubling the length of Tweets until we all could conceivably consider reading actual books again.

Our attention spans have decreased horrifically over the past decade. We can’t abide standing idly by for even a few seconds anymore without whipping out our phones and having a quick check. I have read (courtesy of the excellent QI Twitter feed) that chewing gum sales have fallen by 15% because shoppers are too busy on their phones to notice the gum beside the checkout. I also have my own theory that traffic on our roads is getting worse because the number of cars which get through each green light has gone down because of people dicking about on their phones. ~ Continue reading ~