What is the Goldfish Generation and has it changed media habits for ever?

It is often said that goldfish have very short memories. While researchers continue to debate whether or not that is actually true, the idea has been attached to younger media consumers, who have been called the Goldfish Generation.

The Goldfish Generation generally refers to younger millennials, Gen Z and Generation Alpha – basically anyone who grew up with smartphones, screens and the ability to have digital content in front of their eyes within seconds.

They tend to lack the patience to sit through advertisements that their predecessors had to endure for decades. They also know full well that they can change the content to fit their mood at the blink of an eye and the swipe of the finger. At a very young age they learnt how to use tablets and smartphones, and navigate YouTube, TikTok and Instagram Reels. Once in a while, you will even notice a young child trying to swipe a physical book as though it were an iPad.

Most controversially, the Goldfish Generation has the been assigned the unfortunate stigma of having a shorter attention span, although the evidence behind that accusation is mixed.

Nevertheless, there is something distinctly different about how younger audiences are consuming content. That in turn is changing how content is created, distributed and ultimately rewarded monetarily.

At the 2024 Global Media Congress in Abu Dhabi, the Generation Goldfish label was the topic of a panel discussion with long-time media professionals from Vice, TikTok and Blinx.

“I do believe that calling this the Goldfish Generation is unfair,” said Rafael Lavor, head of strategy at Vice, a digital media and broadcast company. “Our minds have been the same for millions of years,” he said, before turning to how social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram have cracked the code of users' brains.

“They can release a payoff for each one of the users in a few seconds and this is the reality we are in right now. It's addictive, so that's why they're a bit hooked, it's not that the attention spans are shorter, but rather, we found a way to keep audiences hooked with small videos,” he said, referring to dopamine and how long-form cinema uses similar strategies, albeit on a smaller scale.

Shadi Kandil, general manager of global business solutions for TikTok, also disagreed with the notion that user attention spans were getting shorter and agreed that the Generation Goldfish label was somewhat unfair.

“This is not new,” he explained to the panel audience, referencing the research of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman on decision-making and psychology.

“In the context of science, this has been around for the longest time. What has changed is the volume of content we're dealing with on a daily basis … as well as the immediacy of the content,” he said. The mind is capable of coping with the information onslaught, he added.

“If we want to subject ourselves to a certain piece of content or want to deal with a task, we give it our attention to get to the bottom of it, but if it's something we want to shun … we tend to avoid it, and it's the same of media,” he said.

Mr Lavor and Mr Kandil both agreed that what appeals to newer audiences was changing slightly, and authenticity seemed to be a common thread through successful content across multiple social platforms.

Authenticity, according to Mr Lavor, was key to the successful videos for Vice. “We try to be the one with the most authentic voice, especially with the younger audiences. The more authentic we are we feel like it resonates better, so we're bringing artistry back into content making,” he said.

Mr Kandil echoed those sentiments, with some additional context. “Media and content is a utility and that utility needs to serve a purpose. People seek content because they want to be informed, they want to be entertained, they want to increase knowledge about a specific area. That doesn't change,” he said.

While TikTok is a platform and not a content producer like Vice, Mr Kandil explained how the company's app helped to make it easier for content to be discovered, and noted how the technology behind that app is changing how all generations find content.

“Our engine that serves up the content, we've built an immaculate piece of engineering” he explained, referring to TikTok's algorithm that is the envy of much of the social media world.

“We source out the content that users are putting out there and we find the right moment in time when another user is looking for that piece of content and we match the two together,” he said.

Also taking issue with the Goldfish Generation label was Fadi Radi, chief creative officer at Blinx, a Dubai-based digital media hub focused on Middle Eastern youth content. However, Mr Radi did say that, because of the interfaces of high-speed data transfers of many social media apps, the first three seconds of video content were more crucial than ever to grab users' attention.