Human attention span is 8 seconds, shorter than a goldfish's 9
Unsourced Confidence: high
No primary data found; the trail ends in a roundup, a disowned quote or a circular citation.
- Commonly cited as
- "Microsoft study: attention spans shorter than a goldfish"
- True origin
- None — Microsoft Canada (2015) cited the website Statistic Brain — No traceable data
- Type
- Stat check: A widely repeated statistic traced back to its origin.
- Year
- 2015
- Data as of
- 2015
- Last checked
- What the source says
the figure that everyone picked up on - about our shrinking attention spans - did not actually come from Microsoft's research.
- Method & sample
- Microsoft surveyed 2,000 Canadians and studied the brain activity of 112 people on other questions; the sources Statistic Brain listed had no record of the research.
- Drift between quote and source
- Attribution: Microsoft → Statistic Brain → nothing
- Concept: researchers say attention depends on the task, not one average
- Interest
- The report came from Microsoft's advertising arm.
Safe rephrasing
There is no measured 'average attention span'; attention depends on the task and the content (BBC More or Less, 2017).
Sources we opened
- BBC — Busting the attention span myth (2017) (secondary)
Machine-readable: /api/claims/8-second-attention-span-goldfish.json · Last checked 2026-10-16