It seems like everyone's attention span is getting lower. And I figure in this climate, the ability to pay attention and focus for long spans should give someone a competitive advantage.
Look at the typical response of young people to TV ads - they find the rapid switching and interruptions infuriating. They'll have watched many hourlong episodes of their favorite show, maybe repeatedly, and be able to tell you the story in detail.
I don't think there's an attention span problem, there's a short-circuited attention problem that sucks people into wasting time on superficial content.
Less time reading isn't necessarily a bad thing if our lives are being enriched through other media. Not everything has to be deliberative study. There's a balance to be found between reading, silent contemplation, entertainment or educational audiovisual content, and so on. Going down a YouTube rabbit hole of superficial content is still paying attention, it's just not good for you.
I think there's a lot of subliminal conditioning of attention in people who engage with modern media, and it's easy to have your attention captured, but you can turn that around by being deliberate in your choice of a playlist, or selection of a playlist, and not allowing a third party the ability to choose content for you.
My company wants us to support multiple apps in multiple stacks while providing prod support. If you have "long spans" of time for any one thing, that would be miracle. I am able to focus for long periods of time, but not when the environment requires dropping things to work on a higher priority or join a meeting.
Example: Many people today don’t read books. Therefore they are missing out, big time. Many books contain unique and valuable information/analysis that cannot be obtained elsewhere. So IMHO, people who read books will gain advantages from that activity.