TheNewVerse.News : ATTENTION SPANS

Monday, January 05, 2026

ATTENTION SPANS

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Ten years ago, a shocking headline captured the world’s attention: “Human beings now have an attention span shorter than that of a goldfish!” This claim, though horrifying, was totally bogus. The stat in question—that our attention spans had shrunk to a meagre eight seconds—was founded on two spurious and unverified sources and widely spread by a Microsoft Ads “study” published in 2015… Even if we haven’t quite hit goldfish levels, is there some truth to the assertion that human attention spans are dwindling? The short answer is a resounding “yes”, according to research. —Independent (UK), December 14, 2025

Attention spans in humans have declined

Tremendously since tech bros honed their apps

To deluge us with clickbait that's designed

Expressly to cause frequent mental lapse,

Necessitating countermeasures that

Try earnestly to put the genie back

Inside the bottle, but a TikTok chat

Or YouTube video resists attack,

No matter how you try to disengage—

Safari, Chrome and Edge don't miss a trick:

Psychology will keep you on their page,

And amplify your brain rot as you click...

No antidote for dumbing down is known—

Save ditching both your laptop and your phone!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His poems have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, WestWard Quarterly, and other journals.

Emails to The New Verse News that do not follow the guidelines printed at the top of this page and in this column will be deleted. Poets are reminded, therefore, NOT to send attachments unless specifically requested to do so.

Although the editors and audience of The New Verse News have a politically progressive bias, we welcome well-written verses of various visions and viewpoints.

In any event, opinions expressed in The New Verse News are those of the poems' writers (or, perhaps, only of the poems' speakers) and not necessarily those of the editors, the audience, or other contributors to the site.

TheNewVerse.News walks a fine line between News and Literature. We choose not to publish poems that merely restate what one finds in a news article. On the other hand, we dare not offer verse that misleads our audience into thinking that an invented scenario actually happened in reality. In some cases, therefore, we request an author to add a note to explain how a poem veers from documented facts.

We do not accept work that exhibits racism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, ageism, classism, religious prejudice, ableism, or hatred of any marginalized group or individual.

By submitting work to The New Verse News, each contributor is affirming that the work is entirely her/his/their own creation, that it was not written, developed, or assisted by AI tools such as ChatGPT, that s/he/they owns the copyright to the work, that the work has not been previously published in print or posted online (including on personal blogs and social media or even on a private, password-protected location online), and that the work's publication in The New Verse News does not violate the rights of any publication, organization, or individual. The New Verse News thus requires and expects that each poem published herein is the original work of the person, named in the byline, who submits the poem, although it cannot guarantee that this is the case.

The editor typically introduces a poem on site with an illustration borrowed from news stories or photo collections. Although we reject any AI-created or AI-enhanced poetry, we do use graphics generated using AI applications at Shutterstock and NightCafé. We understand the ethical dilemmas: https://nightcafe.studio/blogs/info/ethical-concerns-in-using-ai-generated-images and https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/ethical-ai-for-good . If you are uncomfortable with our using AI graphics, you might refrain from submitting your work to us.

By submitting work to The New Verse News, a writer, explicitly or implicitly, agrees to yield first electronic serial rights to The New Verse News according to the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License..

The writer retains all other rights to her/his/their work. The writer of a poem accepted by the editors will be informed of that acceptance simultaneously with the posting of the poem on site. The editors try to respond to submissions within a fortnight.

The New Verse News accepts multiple, but NOT simultaneous submissions. In general, the editors of The New Verse News try not to post the work of any one poet more than once in ten days.

Please create a new email thread for each submission (i.e.: if you’ve submitted to us before, please don’t reply to a previous submission’s email thread).

The editors do not have the time to comment on poems submitted to The New Verse News. Even had we the time, we have found from unhappy experiences in the past that editorial feedback is too often the prompt for argument and too infrequently accepted as constructive. Decisions are based on the needs of the journal on any given day and are not at all meant to be judgements on the quality of submitted poems. Many poems rejected by The New Verse News have been eagerly accepted and published by other fine journals.

Poems published in The New Verse News generally remain available in the site's archives eternally or until a writer requests that her/his/their work be deleted.

The Managing Editor of The New Verse News is James Penha. Interviews with him regarding the editorial policies of the journal are available at:
Duotrope
Six Questions

Guidelines

Monday, January 05, 2026

ATTENTION SPANS