Do you find yourself spending more time on TikTok than any other apps on your phone? Or do you go for Instagram Reels that last for only seconds rather than those long, dragging 30-minute content on YouTube? Well, you may not be the only one. Recent years have actually shown that humans now have a shorter attention span than a goldfish. So, no wonder, people prefer shorter forms of content nowadays.
From initially 12 seconds, humans’ attention span has significantly decreased to eight seconds in the past two decades—that’s faster than the average time of a website to fully load. And many would agree that it is mainly due to the world’s obsession over technology.
The more time people spend on the digital world, the less their focus gets.
These insights help brands and businesses especially to keep up and be able to stay relevant in such a fast-pacing world. They need to take these marketing trends into consideration and use it to their advantage.
These short, quick, and bite-sized contents mentioned above are called snackable content. As the name suggests, it is meant to be easily digested. It can be in forms of photos, infographics, memes, short videos, or the likes, that you generally see every day when you scroll through your social media feed or browse through the web.
Thus, it cannot be stressed enough that these snackables are not just for marketing purposes only. They are also great for you and your busy brain due to its non-intimidating nature. Here’s a few reasons why snackable content is beneficial for you:
Snackables are Quick to Digest
With the oversaturated digital landscape today, everybody is exposed to a number of content on a daily basis. You may not be able to notice it most of the time, but at some point, you experience information overload and get overwhelmed with the volume of information you are introduced to regularly.
A study done by the Pew Research Center revealed that one out of five of Americans feel overloaded by information. Off of that number, 40% find it difficult to determine what information is trustworthy.
This validates the fact that as a human being, you can only process a certain amount of information all at once. The idea behind the just-in-time system, where what’s only needed is consumed at the moment, can be connected with this.
Taking in information in small bites makes it way easier to cope.
They Improve your Focus and Support Retention
Experts from Morris Psychological Group did a research revealing the impact of taking in too much content. Accordingly, it affects your memory and focus massively.
“Being constantly bombarded with far more information than we can process works to the detriment of our memory, our concentration and ultimately our ability to produce timely results and make good decisions,” neuropsychologist Dr. Kenneth Freundlich said in the study.
Multiple and huge volumes of information do take a toll on your decision-making. Take note that your brain only has limited capacity to process everything.
Therefore, short bursts of content will be kinder to your mind. Snackables will retain better than large amounts of content delivered all at once. Plus, relying heavily on visuals, snackable content will be able to improve your comprehension and retention.
Instant and Heavy Impact
Breaking information into tiny pieces makes everything stickier and more powerful too. Microcontent communicates with the audience much quickly with its user-friendly and easy-to-decipher format.
Snackable content excels in delivering immediate results in a short period of time. The faster the content reaches your brain, the faster your brain is able to process the information. So better believe that there’s more to entertainment than what that 30-seconder video you just watched offers.
