It’s an observation that is becoming increasingly common in university lecture halls: students are no longer able to sit through a full movie without checking their phones, pausing, or simply giving up. And some professors are sounding the alarm.
An attention span in free fall
Several university professors have shared their frustration on social media and in interviews. When they assign a film as part of their coursework — whether it’s a classic, a documentary, or even a recent production — a growing number of students admit they can’t watch it in one sitting.
Some ask to watch it at 1.5x or 2x speed. Others watch it in fragments of 15 to 20 minutes spread over several days. And some simply don’t watch it at all, relying instead on summaries found online or generated by AI.
For professors, this evolution is deeply concerning. Cinema, like literature, requires sustained attention, the ability to let a narrative unfold at its own pace. By losing this capacity, students are also losing their ability to analyze, to feel nuance, and to engage with complex works.
The culprit most often cited is, unsurprisingly, social media and short-form video platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. These platforms have conditioned an entire generation to consume content in bursts of 15 to 60 seconds, making anything longer feel like an eternity.
Some professors have adapted by assigning shorter films or breaking up screenings into segments. But others refuse to compromise, arguing that learning to sustain attention is precisely one of the skills that education should develop.
