We Haven't Lost Our Attention Spans Yet

The state of Substack writing

This Weekly Edition of Inkwell features Griffin Gooch

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THE FUTURE CHURCH will be filled with veterans of an attention rebellion currently unfolding. During historical eras when literacy or deep thinking declined, Christians usually led the charge in the renaissance of the mind and heart. We can confidently put the caricatures of Christians as unthinking science deniers away. We have always been a people of the written word, whether it’s discourse, prose, poem, or psalm.

Social scientists have speculated about the shrinking attention span for about four decades now. First, the music videos were to blame, then commercials, then AOL, Facebook, Twitter, and on and on until TikTok—the punching bag scapegoat for all brain rot. Yet commentators often overlook a curious phenomenon: no new focus-stealing app has risen to take TikTok’s throne.

And yet everyone who uses TikTok has been left wanting. The attention-farming videos don’t solve their deeper existential crises; they just numb them. Many users are turning elsewhere to scratch the itch of the meaning crisis, arriving at platforms that encourage more in-depth contemplation, thoughtful engagement, and sustained attention, such as YouTube, Discord, and Substack.

My point is that maybe the rise in popularity of long-form content, from 3-hour YouTube debates to increased interest in closed-circuit platforms like Discord, audiobooks, games that require 80+ hours to complete, and 3,000-word Substack posts, is emblematic of something. Is there possibly an attention rebellion among those dissatisfied with coercive apps?

I see a surprising number of young folks choosing to train their minds rather than allow the endless scroll to atrophy them. Exhausted with being used by technology, they’re turning the tables and harnessing technology to fertilize creativity in a world where the generative impulse is increasingly outsourced.

“MEDIA ISN’T DEAD. It’s on Substack.” These words were plastered on a giant kiosk at Grand Central Station in what remains one of Substack’s very few advertisements. Best part is, I think it might be true.

Nowadays, it’s often forgotten that many newspapers started out as truth-stabilizers, rebelling against the way those in power twisted narratives to fit their own agendas. When the king, the papacy, or the government offered a polished version of the truth, a group of fact-checkers would launch The Guardian or The Chicago Tribune to platform the vox populi.

This is one of the best metaphors for Substack. It captures the kind of lightning of an upstart paper—a place where a user with 10 followers can publish a hot take on Sabrina Carpenter, Jordan Peterson, or John Mark Comer and outperform any article from a major publication for the day. Although some users argue that Substack’s algorithms no longer allow unknown writers to get traction, this isn’t even in truth’s ballpark. Posts from non-celebrity writers still regularly blow up (as my friend Marc Sims has shown recently).

Out of all the sites I’ve ever hung out on—and, as a digital native who has used social media since 4^th grade, I’ve hung out on a lot—Substack is by far the most creatively rewarding.

SUBSTACK PUT THE MYTH of the solitary artist, the persona of the isolated genius, click-clacking angstily at a typewriter, to death. It does so through algorithms that help Christian writers develop what the music producer Brian Eno calls a “scenius.” A scenius is essentially a group of creatives who fall into the same “scene,” united around niche interests and common values. As iron sharpens iron, so putting creatives in the same shared space spurs mutual creativity and innovation.

This is why writers Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson highlight the importance of the city. Despite their issues, cities still function as urban centers of communal creativity by simply putting artists in close proximity to each other. All creatives need fellow creatives to bounce ideas off of and build momentum, breeding something like positive peer-pressure.

This is sort of how Substack works—or at the very least, how it aspires to work. It throws writers into the deep end and lets them sink, float, or swim. The feedback, the friendly competition, the mutual respect, all of it refines and defines our style. Every writer who sticks to it improves and inevitably comes to cringe at the scribbles they called “essays” the year prior.

THE CALIBER OF CHRISTIAN WRITING overflowing on this platform dwarfs anything I’m seeing from traditional publishing. The reason rag-tag essays can outshine just-released, mega-marketed hardcovers is similar to how indie bands or shoestring-budget films often mesmerize us, while big-budget productions underwhelm. It’s what they break: the rules, the conventions, the fourth walls. It’s the sweet and appealing scent of fallibility—the typos and sloppy grammar that foreground the glory of not relying on editorial bureaucracy or ChatGPT simplicity. In short, it’s an intoxicating aura of normal.

If you’re an aspiring writer, looking to find readers, hoping to publish books one day, or just wanting to write for a magazine or online publication, the best advice I can give you is to start putting your stuff on Substack. It’s growing pretty rapidly at the moment, and while it was pretty quaint for its first five years or so of its existence, we’ve just recently seen a wave of Substack writers get their first book deals. Publishers are starting to watch the platform because it contains a growing microcosm of the future of Christian online and digital publishing.

Recently, a woman who runs a publishing house—one that I can guarantee has filled a few slots on your bookshelf—pointed out to me that they’re looking to Substack more and more for potential authors because Substack subscribers are direct evidence of literal readers. Your subscribers aren’t following you because you post funny videos or know your way around Canva. They’re following you because they read your literal, long-form writings. And it’s a pretty seamless stepping stone to move from reading someone’s online writing to reading their physical books. It’s far less seamless to convert TikTok followers into book readers.

EVEN WELL-ESTABLISHED publications are noticing that there’s no better ecosystem for boosting discoverability. In the past year, The Economist, Mere Orthodoxy, and The New Yorker all moved to Substack. There are plenty of reasons for this. An article published on the New Yorker’s website has to essentially wait until a reader shares the article on their socials to attract new engagement. Now, all they need to draw in new readers is a couple of likes and a restack. Upgrading from free to paid is easier for both parties. There’s also virtually no concern with censorship, pandering to corporate product placement, or pop-up ad fatigue.

I might even go as far as to say Substack has become the makeshift MFA for writers and readers, so the publications can’t help but migrate to where the majority of their readers and contributors hang out. As my friend A. A. Kostas put it recently in his own pro-Substack post, “All roads lead to Substack.”

Of course, Substack isn’t without its flaws. There’s growing concern about pages that rely on AI-generated slop. In fact, if I had to bet, Substack is likely entering a McCarthyism era that will substitute communist suspicions for AI accusations. There are also more and more creators expressing frustration with the influx of celebrity writers that seem to skew the pure meritocracy.

But even that seems like a good basis for rational optimism about the platform: the migration of celebrities exemplifies the unanticipated popularity of a social media site designed for content that requires more than 6 seconds to consume. All of which fits within forecasts about the surprising renewal of interest in long-form content that we’re currently seeing.

I HAVE NO IDEA what 2026 holds for the Christian media landscape at large. But I’m fascinated by the trend of hyper-transparency within Christian writing. Whereas past decades saw polished, flawless pastors with phosphorescent white teeth making the most waves, it seems the writing that takes off on Substack is truly catered to a sober authenticity.

It’s an authenticity that’s fed up with a landscape of posturing and just wants to connect with other humans who have real human experiences. This, too, might be the result of social media burnout: tired of seeing nothing but success, we’d rather share failure, which is perhaps the most sincere and relatable thing about us. Transparency can make social media actually social.

The future is intrinsically unpredictable, but if I had to bet, Substack is presently the most idyllic training ground for strengthening attention spans, engaging in upbuilding discourses, and crafting the written word through community and with a radiance that points back to Christ.

Thoughtful, vibrant, faith-oriented writing isn’t dead—it’s on Substack,
for now.

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Griffin Gooch
Writer & Student

Griffin Gooch is a writer, speaker, and professor currently working on his doctorate in theology at the University of Aberdeen. He writes most frequently on Substack and has been published in Christianity Today, Fare Forward, Christ and Pop Culture, Mere Orthodoxy, and Inkwell.

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📸 Photography by Elizabeth Sanders

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