Communicating in an Age of Fractured Attention

Communication is not merely a transactional act but a formative one, a process through which understanding of the world and relationships with others are shaped.

You may have noticed: meaningful communication has become increasingly difficult amid the digital landscape. Messages are often lost in a flood of fragmented information, shortened sentences, and algorithm-driven content. As people’s attention spans shrink, ensuring that important messages are not only sent but also received and understood presents a growing challenge. For educators, leaders, and anyone trying to convey significant ideas, the question is no longer just about how to communicate effectively; it is about whether communication itself is still possible in a way that truly resonates.

The contemporary moment exists in the shadow of what might be termed the Great Collapse of Attention. Once, information moved deliberately, bearing with it the weight of its own significance: letters carried by hand, announcements intoned from pulpits, declarations affixed to the doors of institutions with the tacit understanding that such proclamations required time and care to compose and an equal measure of intention to absorb. Now, information is flung into the ether with a desperation more akin to a survival instinct than a genuine attempt to communicate. Texts arrive truncated, their punctuation haphazard and emotive hieroglyphs filling the void where nuance might once have been. Email inboxes overflow not with correspondence but with the digital detritus of an attention economy in which the mere act of being seen is deemed victory enough.

A school leader navigating this treacherous terrain resembles a latter-day lighthouse keeper tending a beacon whose beams are refracted, distorted, even swallowed by the shifting tides of audience distractions. Efforts to communicate intentionally—at the "right time," to the "right people," for the "right purpose"—feel undermined not by a lack of effort but by the structural impossibility of ensuring that anyone is truly receiving the message. The very phrase "no one reads that" echoes like the chant of some nihilistic chorus, a refrain that dismisses not merely the specific medium in question but the very premise that communication itself remains possible in any meaningful sense.

What has brought society to this point? Is it the hypnotic glow of screens, whose endless scrolls offer a simulacrum of engagement while eroding the capacity to focus? Is it the cultural fetishization of efficiency, which prizes brevity over depth, preferring bullet points to paragraphs, summaries to substance? Perhaps it is the breakdown of a shared understanding that communication is a reciprocal act requiring both effort and attention from all parties involved. The transmitter must strive to be clear and precise, but the receiver must also be willing to engage, to decode, to absorb. When one side of this equation falters—or worse, when both do—the entire enterprise collapses.

Consider the paradox often observed: despite painstaking efforts to tailor messages to community needs, complaints arise that "no one knew" or "no one read" this or that critical piece of information. This happens even when the information in question has been disseminated through every conceivable channel—newsletters, emails, announcements, even the occasional old-fashioned printed notice. The problem is not merely one of distribution or timing but of a deeper cultural malaise, a collective attention span so degraded that it can scarcely hold a single coherent thought long enough to see it through to completion.

There is, too, the darker irony that those who lament their ignorance are often the very same individuals who dismiss the efforts to inform them. They wield "no one reads that" as both a critique and a shield, deflecting any suggestion that the responsibility for communication is shared. It is a gesture at once defensive and accusatory, an attempt to absolve themselves of accountability even as they undermine the accountability of others.

What, then, is to be done? A retreat into the bite-sized forms that dominate contemporary discourse—emojis, gifs, pithy one-liners stripped of context or subtlety—may seem tempting. But to do so would be to abandon the principles of intentionality and depth that underpin not only communication but the broader mission of education. For if the liberal arts teach anything, it is that communication is not merely a transactional act but a formative one, a process through which understanding of the world and relationships with others are shaped.

Perhaps the only viable response is to persist, quixotic though it may feel, in the belief that some will read, some will absorb, some will act. To communicate well in this fractured age is to accept that efforts will often fall into the void but to strive nonetheless, knowing that the alternative—silence, indifference, surrender—is not an option. And perhaps, in the end, that is the true measure of effective communication: not whether it is universally received but whether it is undertaken with clarity, intention, and the hope that it might yet find its mark.

Michael S. Rose, a leader in the classical education movement, is author of the New York Times bestseller Goodbye, Goodmen (Regnery), Ugly As Sin (Sophia Institute), The Art of Being Human (Angelico), Benedict XVI: The Man Who Was Ratzinger (Spence), and other books. His articles and op/eds have appeared in dozens of publications including The Wall Street Journal, Epoch Times, New York Newsday, and The Dallas Morning News.