The connectivity buzz: how we love our digital distractors
With so many simultaneous multimodal media messages vying for our attention, a state of perpetual digital distraction is quickly becoming the norm.
What are the most effective ways for communicators to break through the mass media clutter and cacophony and be seen/heard?
A quick peek at the hierarchy of digital distractions can help. The informative infographic arranges hierarchically the many ways that information and communications technologies interrupt our lives and claim our attention.
Turns out that anything mobile is far more likely to hit its mark than any other communication channel. People are tied to, and seemingly endlessly intrigued by our smartphones, and eager to consume mobile digital data. According to 2009 Pew surveys, today 77% of teens and 85% of adults own a cellphone.
Mobile marketing
Does this mean we would like to consume anything on those phones? Even mobile advertising for example? Well, no, er…, well maybe, but mostly not.
Teens are three times more receptive to mobile advertising, according to 2008 Nielsen research cited by MediaPost. But NOT, however, if the ads are embedded in downloaded iPhone apps—there is major consumer pushback on that front.
In general, mobile marketing is not wildly succeeding in getting our attention. A study released this month showed that mobile users are half as likely to click on an advertisement versus desktop web users. And even more specifically, the study showed that iPhone ranked the worst for clickthrough rate—this despite the “digital distractions” hierarchy ranking “anything on the iPhone” at the very top of the list of e-information we consume voraciously. Anything, it seems, except adverts. Unless they are particularly innovative, useful or fun appverts or gameverts, like for example Volkswagen’s new interactive racing game for the iPhone “Scirocco R 24 hour Challenge” which is rapidly ascending the top ten free download list at Apple’s app store (<– link opens iTunes).
Analysts at eMarketer predict that in 2010-13 “Mobile [marketing] will grow considerably more quickly than online ad spending as a whole,” in their new report: “Mobile Advertising and Marketing: Change Is in the Air.”
Beyond handhelds, more digital distractions await
Ranking below mobile, a couple of levels down the hierarchy of distractors: voicemail or email communications also claim part of our attention span, and further down, but also enticing, notifications of new twitter followers and fresh friend requests (the authors of the hierarchy argue that, these days we get some many of those invitations to connect, that we’ve become accustomed to responding automatically—so they distract, surely, but require relatively low engagement).
Incidentally, at the top of the hierarchy of digital distractions is device failure—a dead cellphone or crashed system, always guaranteed to get our attention fast, largely because they cause “digital pain.”
Terminal distraction and the attention crisis
Take a step back from specific examples of digital attention-hogging gizmos and gear, and the bigger picture of infovores and continuous partial attention via digital gadget-juggling comes into focus. Is perpetual distraction and even information overstimulation cause for technopanic? New York Magazine author Sam Anderson takes on that question, exploring the issue from multiple angles in a comprehensive feature article, “In Defense of Distraction.”
There he critically assesses the outlines of what experts call the attention crisis in modern digital culture. Anderson refutes some claims about the dangers of digital distraction and multitasking, suggesting that there are benefits to be considered. “It’s possible that we’re all evolving toward a new techno-cognitive nomadism,” Anderson writes, “a rapidly shifting environment in which restlessness will be an advantage again.”
