The content you're reading now is "below the fold."
People who believe in the concept of "the fold" in digital media would think you're not terribly likely to see this, because you had to scroll to get here.
But the truth is, users scroll without even thinking about it. You just did.
Think about it. No one goes to a website, lets the homepage load, and thinks, "Huh, I guess that's all the content." 
This may have been a concern in the very early days of the web, when people were less familiar with viewing websites — and I believe that's why "the fold" became a topic that was discussed a lot back then. But the reality is that it's no longer a concern, and the concept of the fold simply doesn't apply to digital media.
The psychology of scrolling
When we visit a website, our eyes begin to scan the content, and we automatically begin to scroll as we wish to consume more content. We know the page is done when scrolling stops. That's it. We don't even think about it. On top of that, most websites have a footer that's a strong visual cue to the user that the page is done. Our brains know how websites typically work.
Let's dig into this even deeper. When you first visited this page, what made you scroll?
Maybe someone sent you the link to this page to illustrate to you that "the fold" doesn't exist in digital media. Hopefully they didn't tell you what the page was about, because they wanted you to experience it for yourself. When you arrived at the page, you were expecting more than just the content at the top — your colleague wouldn't just send you a link to a page with so little content, right? — so you automatically scrolled.
Or maybe you ended up on this page by following a link that you found, and maybe the link you followed gave you a little context for what the page was about — or maybe it didn't. In either case, you landed on the page, saw that there wasn't much content visible, and just automatically scrolled to see if there was a point to this whole thing. Guess what, there was, and this is it.
(Is it possible that our brains subconsciously notice the small scroll bar at the right side of our desktop browser, and that signals to us that there's more below? Possibly — but keep in mind, there's no visible scroll bar for mobile. And we still scroll.)
Here's another question. Which content on this page have you spent more time reading and engaging with? The content "above the fold," or the content "below the fold"? What does that tell you about the importance of the fold?
As digital professionals, we should remove "the fold" from our vocabulary. And we should educate our clients about this, too.
Is there value in putting higher quality content higher up on the page? Of course, we should consider a heirarchy for all of our content.
Can all important content appear on-screen when the page loads? No. And that's not a bad thing.
Rather than discuss "the fold," it's fair to talk about "content that's visible on page load without scrolling." (Admittedly much less pithy!) But in the world of digital, that will be a different amount of content for different users, depending on their device and screen size. Think about how much content is visible in one screen of a desktop browser versus how much content is visible in one screen on mobile. It's a completely different amount.
(And this doesn't even take into account other things we can't control, like whether the user has their browser zoomed, or if they've set their phone to have a larger font size.)
We cannot perfectly control which content is "above the fold" (ugh) for all users. It's not realistic. The idea goes against the nature of responsive media. As always, we should embrace the nature of digital, rather than fight against it.
If a client says, "I want [x/y/z] to be above the fold!" and we agree to that, we're setting ourselves up for the risk of failure, and we're setting our client up for frustration. We're also letting them believe that putting something higher up means it will get better engagement, which is not necessarily true. It's our job as digital professionals to educate our clients and to help guide them toward make good choices about digital. We're the experts!
Where does the term "the fold" even come from?
It comes from the world of newspaper publishing; Google says it probably originated in 1951. In print newspaper publishing, the concept of "the fold" does have meaning, and value — it's referring to the actual, physical fold in the newspaper, halfway down the page. If a potential customer is walking past a newsstand, or a newspaper box, the content that's "above the fold" is the only content that will be available to them unless they pick up and/or buy the newspaper. So, that above-the-fold content is the publisher's only chance of grabbing the customer's attention. The rest of the content that's below the fold, as well as the content inside the newspaper, are hidden to the viewer unless they physically engage with it. So you can see why a publisher would put a lot of thinking into what's above the fold.
This is simply not how the web works. I'll say it again: users scroll without even realizing they're doing it. There's no barrier to consuming more content that's lower down on the page, and in fact the user will begin consuming that content automatically.
The fact that "the fold" is a print term makes it even more important that we remove it from our vocabulary when discussing digital. It's apples and oranges. It's misleading. And by using the term we risk not looking as digitally savvy as we should, as digital professionals.
"A Crease in Space & Time"
By the way, I made up the nonsensical title for this piece just so the link itself and the visible content on page load wouldn't give anything away about this exercise. I wanted to write and design a page that, at a glance, seems like the intro to a real site, and I specifically wanted that first blurb of content to imply that there isn't necessarily much content here yet — I specifically didn't want to influence people with a "scroll down for more" type of message, or any kind of indication that there was more content below. If you even read the blurb (not all users will!), the last sentence actually gives a sense of finality. And you still scrolled!
The illusion of completeness
I also intentionally gave this page a subtle "illusion of completeness" upon page load. This is another concept that believers in "the fold" would tell you is a reason that users will not scroll. When the page loads, the visible content sits neatly within the browser window, with no content cut off at the bottom of the screen. If you could see the beginning of some cut-off stuff at the bottom, you would, of course, know that there's more below. The lack of this cut-off content is the illusion of completeness — the illusion that there's nothing else below. According to the folks who believe in this concept, a user would not feel that they need to scroll, and so they would not. I even added a light gray line to subtly indicate that this might be the end of the page. And you still scrolled.
By contrast, I'll mention again something I said above: No one goes to a website, lets the homepage load, and thinks, "I guess that's all the content." It's just not how our brains have been trained to engage with websites (and emails, and scrollable apps like Instagram). In very general terms, the data says users will scroll for about two pages/screens, and at that point they'll either be engaged or they'll bounce. But this varies wildly.
Look how long this page is, and you're still scrolling! When content is engaging, users will scroll forever.
An ode to "Life Below 600"
This page was heavily inspired by a wonderful old site called Life Below 600, by Paddy Donnelly — unfortunately, that site was built so long ago that it doesn't perform as intended on larger screens, nor on mobile devices. I wanted to make a new site using the same concept that responds to all screen sizes, so that no matter what screen size or device you're using, this "below the fold" section would be just below the bottom of your screen when you load this page.
Life Below 600 is still online as of this writing (July 2024), and all of the comments are from around 2010, so I assume it went live around then. There's still a ton of great information there, if you can put yourself in the mindset of a web designer/developer back at that time. And a lot of that information is still relevant and applicable today! Some of the comments at the bottom are also very insightful. I urge you to check it out!
If Mr. Donnelly ever somehow reads this, I want to sincerely thank him for Life Below 600. For many years, I showed my colleagues and clients the site as a wonderful way to illustrate this important point, and it really made an impact.
That's all for now! Happy scrolling,
