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January 30, 2026

The Film Students Who Can No Longer Sit Through Films

Everyone knows it’s hard to get college students to do the reading—remember books? But the attention-span crisis is not limited to the written word. Professors are now finding that they can’t even get film students—film students—to sit through movies. “I used to think, If homework is watching a movie, that is the best homework ever,” Craig Erpelding, a film professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told me. “But students will not do it.”

The Film Students Who Can No Longer Sit Through Films

TL;DR

  • Film professors report that college students, even those in film studies, have difficulty maintaining attention during movies.
  • This issue has become more pronounced in the last decade, particularly after the pandemic.
  • Students frequently use their phones during film screenings, despite professors' efforts to enforce bans.
  • Professors observe that students struggle with slow-paced or lengthy films, even iconic ones.
  • The ease of streaming has led some students to view in-person screenings as an inconvenience, and many professors now allow at-home streaming.
  • Tracking data shows low engagement with streamed films, with fewer than 50% starting and only 20% finishing.
  • Students admit to inattentiveness, sometimes watching movies at double speed or while multitasking.
  • Performance on exams questions about film content has declined, forcing professors to grade on curves.
  • The change is linked to increased screen time and a media diet dominated by short-form videos and social media since childhood.
  • Some students entering film programs are not avid cinephiles and have limited exposure to classic films.
  • Movies are increasingly engineered with immediate action to capture and retain attention.
  • Some professors are adapting by teaching 'slow cinema' to retrain attention spans, while others are adjusting by showing shorter films or breaking down longer ones.
  • Filmmaking courses are shifting focus to maximizing audience engagement through short-form content creation.

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