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Every morning, I wake up to a pile of notifications from media platforms. So I scan news feeds while drinking my coffee. When commuting to work, I feel bombarded by information and advertisements on X, formerly known as Twitter. I am overwhelmed and pulled in multiple directions at once.
Despite my attempts to reduce screen time through app limits, I often ignore them and blame myself for mindlessly wasted time “doomscrolling” – all for short-lasting dopamine doses of good content, of abundant content that I don’t remember. A movie or other long content feels too heavy.
But it’s not just me.
On my walk or train ride to work, I notice lots of other people looking down, looking at their phones. They are tuned into the digital world, constantly competing for attention, fighting to keep their eyes glued to the screen.
The average focusing time for individuals looking at a single screen has dropped from 2.5 minutes in 2004 to an average of 47 seconds in 2021, according to Dr. Gloria Mark, professor of computer science at the University of California, Irvine, and author of “Attention: An innovative way to restore balance, happiness and productivity.”
This drop in our ability to pay attention can be a problem. Marcos said in previous searches presented at the 2008 SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, she discovered a strong correlation between greater stress and frequency of attention shift.
While a diminished attention span isn’t due to a personal failing (despite individual variability) most of the time, experts say there are changes you can make to regain control over your mind.
Why attention span is decreasing
The market has priced our attention by competing in an “attention economy” that is influencing the Internet, social media and our lifestyles, according to D. Graham Burnett, founder and director of a nonprofit organization dedicated to attention activism, the Institute for Sustained Attention, and co-creator of the Strother School of Radical Attention in Brooklyn, New York, which calls this the “commodification of our attention.”
“Our attention is being monetized like never before,” said Burnett, who is also the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at Princeton University in New Jersey. “We are experiencing a kind of gold rush, a gigantic technologically intensive and heavily capitalized program of financial exploitation of our most intimate and fundamental attentional capacities.”
Describing the process as human fracking, Burnett said this competition for our attention is toxic. Bombing “destabilizes, pollutes and contaminates the real structures of our beings and our relationships,” he said.
Tracking ‘Likes’ Across Platforms
Similarly, Mark noted the growing sophistication of algorithms that track individual behaviors and interests to select feeds and ads that follow everyone across all platforms.
“Tech companies and advertising marketing companies use this information to build profiles about us and then design targeted algorithms to capture our attention,” said Mark. This is the phenomenon of surveillance capitalism, as coined by Shoshana Zuboff, professor emeritus at Harvard Business School in Boston: collecting your data to monitor and predict your behavior.
“If I click on an ad for a pair of boots, I go to Facebook and look at the boots,” she said. “And if I go to The New York Times, I see the boots and they follow me.”
Even your favorite television shows have shortened movie and clip lengths over the years, with an average cut every four seconds, Mark said. “I’m not saying this causes short attention spans (but) it reinforces our already short attention spans when we watch a movie,” she said.
Online videos also use jump cuts as part of their aesthetic to maintain attention. They remove filler words and natural pauses, Mark said, noting that this abruptness leads to impatience in normal conversations between people.
Social media restrictions on content length also drive the attention dilemma. Although users scroll through content at high speeds, they may develop expectations for rapid content changes, Mark said. The goal is to keep you scrolling because the more you scroll, the more revenue these platforms generate. And there is no financial incentive for platforms to change this model.
It’s not a personal failure
Technology isn’t the only factor that influences attention span, according to Johann Hariauthor of “Stolen focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again.
The other 11 factors include office workflows, air pollution, classroom structures and diet. “The main solution is to protect ourselves in the environment and for us, collectively, to change the environment,” Hari said.
Hari spent time in Silicon Valley interviewing experts who designed key aspects of the technological world we live in and who, he says, realized how they contributed to the current attention collapse. “I think what struck me most was how guilty they felt about what they did,” he said.
How to take back your power
Deleting all forms of media from your phone may not be necessary, but maintaining balance is crucial. “We are social creatures,” said Mark, which is why we respond to messages and turn to media to connect and communicate.
Here are Mark’s suggestions for regaining control over technology.
Become aware of your automatic behaviors. Notice when you are picking up your device – develop “meta-awareness”. This is recognizing what you are doing as it all unfolds.
Develop a plan for taking breaks. They can be scheduled at logical times in your day to avoid burnout and replenish yourself. Mark suggests meditating, going for a walk, or reading something inspiring. Regular breaks are important, she said, to avoid “mental fatigue,” in which people are more susceptible to distraction and loss of control. She also advised engaging in the practice of forethought, which is imagining your future self and goals to keep track of everything you need to complete.
Know your chronotype. In his work, Mark has also discovered that people have personal rhythms of attention that wax and wane throughout the day. Monitoring these “peaks and valleys of attention” should be used to effectively organize your tasks for the day. Keep a diary or understand your chronotype (your activity rate for the day) to find those key energy points, she recommended.
“We have a tank of attentional resources that gets depleted when we keep shifting our attention,” Mark said. “And it gets draining if we force ourselves to focus for too long on something difficult and laborious (without breaks).”
Protect your focus. Hari recommended protecting your focus by using a time lock container to lock your phone for periods of time. He uses it three hours a day to complete writing tasks and suggests working even longer periods without his phone. Additionally, he suggested using an app that imposes time limits on social media or websites that you are addicted to using.
Technological solutions are coming
Hari advocates for these individual behavioral changes, but said these actions alone will not solve the problem. The problem is bigger than all of us individually.
“What I feel at the moment is like someone has been throwing itching powder at us all day,” Hari said. “And then they lean forward and say ‘Hey buddy, you should learn to meditate so you don’t feel itchy all the time.’
“But you need to stop pouring this harmful powder on me,” he said.
Now some companies are trying to make money from the need for focus. Mark recently attended the Association of Computing Machinery’s CHI ’24 Conference — the leading conference in the field of human-computer interaction with cutting-edge technological designs — and was fascinated by prototypes designed to conserve our attention by making it more difficult to use smartphones.
“There are a lot of techniques that create friction in phone use, which I find very ironic,” she said. “People now realize that we need to conserve our attention. Our attention is being sucked away by these devices. And now there are innovations that make it more difficult to use them.”
Some people are already changing their phone settings to grayscale to make them less visually appealing and addictive. Others are rotating their phone multiple times to access social media, unlocking limited app usage. (But if you impose restrictions on most apps, you may need to lock your phone for self-control.) And to increase privacy, to avoid data tracking, some are turning off personalized ads on iPhones or choosing to delete the advertising ID. on Android devices in settings.
It’s important to fight back, Hari said. Although companies seek to control your attention, you have the power to develop healthier habits and live more present, fruitful lives, he noted. “We are citizens of democracies. And we own our own minds. And together, we can get them back if we want,” he said.
“Sustained attention is at the heart of all human achievement,” said Hari, noting that no athlete brings their phone out to check it in the middle of an Olympic event. “When you regain your attention, it really feels like regaining your superpowers.”
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