Great news! Tik Tok has not fried your brain. (Also, Goldfish actually have excellent attention spans.)

Dispelling internet bullshit cloaked under the guise of "research"

In 2015, a groundbreaking scientific study hit the internet headlines and soon went viral: human attention spans had suddenly decreased to a measly eight seconds, all thanks to our social media and internet obsession. Yes, folks, our capacity to focus was now less than that of a mere goldfish, according to the study.

But here is the good news, my friends: the entire study and it’s findings are bullshit. Yes, all of it — even the goldfish part.

But let us dispel this latest trope together, shall we?

1. The supposed groundbreaking study was actually conducted by Microsoft’s Advertising Department. (The keyword here being “advertising”, folks. Advertising = money.)

2. The study was actually no study at all. It was a survey, folks. A survey! And this survey, which had Darwinian-like societal ramifications after hitting the headlines, was just a simple little survey given to 1200 Canadians about their internet habits.

3. Oh, and did I mention that the survey wasn’t even actually conducted by Microsoft’s Ad Department? Nope, it turns out this survey was no company sanctioned study at all. On the contrary, folks; it was actually discovered on another website altogether — by an employee of Microsoft’s Ad team.

4. So what was this mysterious website, you ask: Statistics Brain, of course, (because it sounds smart, right?) Wrong. Statistics Brain was masquerading its’ site as an academic institution when it was nothing more than an SEO site.

5. And finally, folks: Statistics Brain’s survey had nothing to do with goldfish. Nothing.

And interestingly, it turns out that goldfish are actually much smarter than their recent bad internet rep has led us all to believe, according to Professor Felicity Huntingford, who has studied fish behavior for over 50 years:

“[Goldfish have] become a model system for studying the process of learning and the process of memory formation, exactly because they have a memory and because they learn.”

So there you have it, folks! Goldfish are smart. And so are humans! And our attention spans are just fine. So go ahead and keep bingeing those Tik Tok videos. (Just don’t forget to check the facts, folks! Because the internet really is full of a lot of bullshit.)

(Disclaimer: I don’t subscribe to Tik Tok. But that’s not what this article is about.)

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