The internet has officially found the secret to locking in the attention of screen-addicted adolescents: watch satisfying chops of kinetic sand next to a random clip of Family Guy next to a Subway Surfers gameplay.
There is a trend on TikTok of watching the gameplay of the popular mobile game Subway Surfers next to other content like clips from the 2000s sitcom Family Guy, among other shows and popular social media clips. This TikTok trend, known as “sludge” content, has become a popular social experiment concerning attention span. In TikTok “sludge” videos, there are usually two or more videos simultaneously playing next to each other in their respective corners of the screen. This can include clips of other TikToks, storytimes, “satisfying” videos, TV shows, and more.
The selected clips may be barely entertaining parts of the show, but the addition of the gameplay aids more visual stimulation, attracting more attention. This encourages the viewers to stay on that video for longer, garnering views and attention for both the show and the TikTok account. This dual stimulation of content assures the viewer never has a reason to look away from the screen. Some have even taken this content outside the app, using it to help them focus while working or studying.
So, this brings into question: has this type of overstimulating content led to a decrease in attention span amongst youth or most social media users? The Subway Surfers TikToks have become more of a social commentary on society’s content oversaturation. It has even been popularized as memes and in other TikToks where people poke at how young people these days cannot hold their attention long enough and need multiple videos running at once to keep their attention.
Neuropsychologist Dr. Sanam Hafeez told Bustle that, by design, our screens have the constant tap of notifications and information that give us an immediate and small hit of dopamine, which keeps us coming back for more. This way of operating trains our attention to be able to focus on multiple items at once in quicker and shorter spans of time. In the book “Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity,” Dr. Gloria Mark explains how years of research have tracked our decrease in attention spans. She states that from 2004 to the present, people’s attention spans have decreased from an average of 2.5 minutes to 47 seconds. Mark also studied other reports that show that younger children are generally more susceptible to distractions than older children. She said in an interview for the Speaking of Psychology podcast, “So it turns out children that are as young as two to four years old, they already average two and a half hours of screen time a day. And when they get to be between five and eight, they average about three hours of screen time a day.” When children spend more time on the screen, it makes them think that the screen time level and lack of quality attention is normal behavior.
In another study, John Grafman, the Chief of Cognitive Neuroscience at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, examined the lack of depth in tasks when multitasking. He refers to the idea of “media multitasking,” which is the increased exposure to several media stimuli since the use of the internet and devices has become more common. People are exposed to so much content that is made to capture attention, but this interference of multiple stimuli can cause a shortfall in attention span.
The dual-video format on TikTok, which includes tools like stitching and dueting, offers a creative way for content creation. The TikToks of the Subway Surfers gameplay is just one comical example of how youth nowadays can access cheap and easy content to entertain and lock in their attention. As this trend satirizes the demise of youth’s attention span, it forces us to reconsider the ways we absorb our content and direct our attention.
