The impact of a shorter attention span is that it changes the way people consume information.  Conditioned by Twitter, Snapchat, and other similar networks people don’t have the tolerance for longer form content.  People can navigate at will to what they want to see and when they want to see it.  These new patterns of behavior affect the way people relate to one another.

Will people begin to lose patience with each other as they lose interest in what they see on social media?  Perhaps replacing a human is just as easy as swiping one way or the other on a smartphone.  As a person’s focus becomes more fragmented by the volume of information coming at them, how does one make sense of the whole?  Losing the ability to see the big picture and discern the patterns that define our existence could cause people to lose themselves and drown in a sea of information.

New cultures will emerge from new patterns of human experience.  Shepherding this change is the responsibility of leaders that can step back and see reality for what it is.  We can’t rely on technology to do this for us.