Shorter Posts: Cultural Significance to the Shift

With the shift in technologies and expanding types of social media, it seems as though the shorter posts are becoming king. With the transition from long posts into visual social media (that was discussed in another article) a look at the significance of the shorter posts is an important discussion about social media and culture.

A study done by Buddy Media showed that Facebook posts of 80 characters or less have a 27 percent higher engagement rate than longer posts; not surprising given the huge amount of things to read, watch and respond to daily (Seiter). With the over saturation of articles/posts/updates/blogs to read and images and video to look at, it is understandable that social media users are more likely to read and engage with shorter posts. Social media has given way to the rewiring of our society’s brains; creating shorter attention spans and the rise of storytelling in bullet-points, and creating a society of skim readers (Seiter). Even the newest formatting change by Facebook reorganized user pages to a timeline style, telling stories through images and bullet-point like text posts.

The average American’s attention span 10 years ago was 12 minutes; today it is only 5 minutes. Studies are pointing to social media as the main cause for this drastic decline noting that younger people have shorter attention spans than the elderly (How Social Media is Ruining our Minds). This rewiring of the brain is having an impact on our culture with younger generations being more likely to skim over information and have a short attention span.

Not only are updates getting shorter and loaded with image and video, blog posts are also becoming shorter and generally have some sort of image accompanying the post. Readers want to have easily understandable content that is easily read or skimmed. Experts say there are some advantages to going shorter, like ability to write more frequently, less writer’s block, better chance for new readers, and more comments (DangApricot). These reasons for shorter blog entries make sense but the better chance for new readers is the interesting one for this article. Generally readers are looking for something specific when reading blogs and if it isn’t easily accessible they will leave the site. Writers want to keep readers coming back for more and want to capture their attention.

Shorter posts, namely pictures, have become a quick communication tool to social media users. The shortage of time and amount of content to sift through has a profound effect on this change. Technological advances and the attention span of social media users seems to be at least part of the explanation to why posts are getting shorter and a move toward the visual is taking place in social media culture.

Sources

• DangApricot. “Why Are Bloggers Writing Shorter and Shorter Posts?” Velvet Blues, Inc. 2005- 2012. N.d. Web. 16 Dec 2012.
• “How Social Media is ruining our Minds [Infographic]”. Assisted Living Today, 2011. 13 Dec. 2011. Web. 16 Dec 2012.
• Seiter, Courtney. “Short Attention Spans and Social Media: How to Fight Back”. Third Door Media, Inc. 2012. 3 Jan. 2012. Web. 16 Dec 2012.