Are Attention Spans Actually Decreasing?
Almost a decade ago, a Time magazine article went viral when the author proclaimed that humans now have a shorter attention span than a goldfish - just eight seconds, on average. While this is wildly untrue (their claim was based on a small sample of web users and it is currently impossible to measure the attention span of a goldfish), observations of our own experiences (popcorn brain, anyone?), increasing ADHD diagnosis rates, and teachers sounding the alarm around students’ inability to focus may lead us to believe that our attention spans are at risk in the digital information age. But what does the science actually say?
What is an attention span?
Broadly speaking, attention is about directing our awareness. We can only hold so much information in our conscious awareness at once, so it entails focusing a limited cognitive resource on a specific stimulus or stimuli while tuning out others. Attention is a multi-faceted concept, but when we’re speaking about an attention span, we are generally referring to ‘sustained attention’ or ‘attention-perseverance’. This is the length of time we can direct our awareness to a given stimulus - a task, an object, an idea, or even a person - without losing focus.
So, are our attention spans really decreasing?
While there is a formidable knowledge gap when it comes to measuring attention spans over time, particularly in pre-teens and adolescents, the work of Dr. Gloria Marks offers us some insight. Dr. Marks’ research shows that on average, the length of time people stay on a single computer screen before switching to another has decreased from 2.5 minutes to 47 seconds over the past two decades. In a study that used screen capture technology to analyze mobile device screen time, researchers at Pennsylvania State University and Stanford University found that the median number of times participants engaged with their phone was 228. What’s more, on average each session only lasted 10 seconds.
A visualization of one participant’s daily mobile screen time. Each colored bar represents a unique “session”. The median number of sessions participants engaged in on a daily basis was 228, with each session lasting 10 seconds on average.
These numbers give us clues into what’s going on with our attention spans. While it’s difficult to definitively say from this research whether our attention spans are actually decreasing, here’s what we do know:
When our attention is disrupted, our ability to learn is impaired because the new object of our focus interferes with memory encoding, which is how we save information into memory. Encoding requires enough active engagement with a given object to move that information from short-term memory into long-term memory, so if we’re constantly engaging with new things during this process, our engagement – and therefore our learning – suffers.
Our cognitive resources are limited, so while we may think we’re multitasking when we’re working and responding to text messages at the same time, we’re actually task-switching. Task-switching has a significant cost; in fact, Marks estimates that on average, it takes us 25 minutes to get back to our original task when we’re interrupted. She offers a whiteboard analogy: when we start a task we gather the information we need for that task on our internal whiteboard, which is the limited space we have for our working memory. When we’re interrupted or when we switch to something else, we need to erase and redraw that whiteboard for the new task, and then erase and redraw it to switch back, and so on and so forth. The more we have to redraw our whiteboards, the bigger the cognitive resource cost and the less focused or productive we really are.
Our attention is affected by our environment. Of those 228 times people used their phones in the Penn State-Stanford study, 34% of the time they were engaging with social media. There’s a good reason for this: known as the social media dopamine loop, notifications activate the reward pathways in our brain, releasing dopamine (the ‘pleasure’ neurotransmitter) and motivating us to come back for more in a cyclical loop. This is why you may feel a pull to check your phone even if you haven’t received a notification - your brain is seeking that dopamine hit.
What can we do to strengthen our attention spans?
While our attention spans may be influenced by the information age we live in, it’s important to recognize that ultimately, it’s still up to us to choose how we direct our attention. A better question to ask is: how can we have more control over our attention spans?
We can change our environment, even in small ways. Removing potential distractions when possible will lower the chances of engaging in task-switching. Putting our phones in another room will help us disrupt the social media dopamine loop, over time extending how long our brains can focus without seeking that dopamine hit.
Recognize that attention is task-specific. One reason it’s so difficult to definitively say whether or not attention spans are decreasing is that it depends on the task with which someone is engaged. We may be able to sit through an entire 2-hour, action-packed movie, but start to squirm within 10 minutes of a nature documentary. Infusing things with storytelling and interactivity are two evidence-backed ways of increasing the likelihood we’ll be able to sustain focus.
Recognize that attention is a limited resource, so give yourself a break - figuratively and literally. Our attention is a limited cognitive resource, meaning that it depletes as we expend it throughout the day. This means that our attention spans are likely to be strongest in the mornings, after we have (hopefully!) had a full night’s rest. It also means that if we feel ourselves losing focus, the best thing we can do for our attention may be to give it a break.
Paying attention to attention
There is some evidence to suggest attention spans, on average, have been decreasing, but this may say more about our evolving environments than our actual capacity to sustain attention. Though there are things that may make it more or less easy to stay focused, ultimately we have power over how we choose to direct our attention. For those who are concerned, there are evidence-based things we can do to improve control over our attention span - and support today’s digital natives in doing the same.
References
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