Sofia Barruti
(CNN) — Every morning, I wake up to a stack of notifications from media platforms. Then I check the news while sipping my coffee. As I head to work, I’m bombarded by information and ads on X, formerly known as Twitter. I feel overwhelmed and pulled in several directions at once.
Despite my attempts to limit my screen time through app limits, I often ignore them and blame myself for the time I waste mindlessly doomscrolling, all for a short, pleasant hit of dopamine from a wealth of content I won’t remember. A movie or other long-form content just feels like too much of a burden to bear.
But it’s not just me.
As I walk to work or take the train, I see many other people looking down and staring at their phones. They are plugged into the digital world and are constantly competing for attention, vying to keep your eyes glued to the screen.
The average focus time for people 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, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Irvine, and author of “Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity.”
That decline in our ability to pay attention could be a problem. Mark said that in previous research presented at the 2008 SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, he found a strong correlation between increased stress and the frequency of attention switching.
While a shortened attention span isn’t due to personal failing (despite individual variability) most of the time, experts say there are changes you can make to regain control of your mind.
Why is attention span decreasing?
The market has put a price on our attention as we compete in an “attention economy” that is influencing the Internet, social media and our lifestyles, according to D. Graham Burnett, founder and director of the attention activism nonprofit Institute for Sustained Attention and co-creator of the Strother School of Radical Attention in Brooklyn, New York, who 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 living through a kind of gold rush, a gigantic, highly capitalized and technologically intensive program of financial exploitation of our most intimate and fundamental attentional capacities.”
Burnett described the process as human fracking and said this competition for our attention is toxic. The bombardment “destabilizes, contaminates and pollutes the very structures of our being and our relationships,” she said.
Tracking Likes Across Platforms
Similarly, Mark pointed to the increasing sophistication of algorithms that track individual behaviors and interests to select feeds and ads that follow everyone across all platforms.
“Tech and advertising marketing companies use this information to build profiles about us and then design algorithms that are designed to capture our attention,” Mark said. This is the phenomenon of surveillance capitalism, as Shoshana Zuboff, professor emeritus at Harvard Business School in Boston, called it: collecting data to track and predict our behavior.
“If I click on an ad for a pair of boots, I go to Facebook and see the boots,” he said. “And if I go to the New York Times, I see the boots and they follow me everywhere.”
Even favorite TV shows have been shortened in length for movies and clips over the years, with an average cut every four seconds, Mark said. “I’m not saying this causes a reduced attention span (but) it reinforces our already reduced attention span when watching a movie,” he said.
Online videos also use audio cuts as part of their aesthetic to maintain attention. They remove filler words and natural pauses, Mark said, noting that this abruptness breeds impatience in normal conversation between people.
Social media restrictions on content length also add to the attention dilemma. While users scroll through content at high speed, they may develop expectations of rapid changes in content, Mark said. The goal is to keep you scrolling because the longer you scroll, the more revenue these platforms generate. And there are no financial incentives for the platforms to disrupt this model.
It’s not a personal fault
Technology isn’t the only factor affecting attention span, according to Johann Hari, author 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 key solution is to protect yourself in the environment and for all of us to change the environment together,” Hari said.
Hari spent time in Silicon Valley interviewing experts who designed key aspects of the technological world we live in and who, he said, realized how they had contributed to the current breakdown in attention. “I think what struck me most was how sick and guilty they feel about what they’ve done,” he said.
How to get your power back
It may not be necessary to remove all communication media from your phone, but it is essential to maintain balance. “We are social creatures,” says Mark, so 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’re picking up your device – develop “meta-awareness” – recognizing what you’re doing as it happens.
Develop a plan for taking breaks. These can be scheduled at logical times in your day to prevent burnout and replenish your energy. Mark suggests meditating, taking a walk or reading something inspiring. Regular breaks are important, he said, to avoid “mental fatigue,” in which people are more susceptible to distraction and loss of control. He also advised practicing foresight, which involves imagining your future self and goals to stay on track with what you need to complete.
Know your chronotype. In his work, Mark has also found that people have personal rhythms of attention that rise and fall throughout the day. Tracking these “peaks and valleys of attention” should be leveraged to effectively organize your tasks for the day. Keep a journal or understand your chronotype (your rhythm of activity during the day) to find these key energy points, he recommended.
“We have a reservoir of attentional resources that gets depleted when we constantly shift our attention,” Mark said. “And it gets depleted if we force ourselves to focus for too long on something difficult and effortful (without breaks).”
Protect your focus. Hari recommended protecting your focus by using a time-locking container to lock your phone for periods of time. He uses it for three hours a day to complete writing assignments and suggests gradually increasing the time you spend off your phone. He also suggested using an app that sets time limits for social media or websites you become addicted to.
Technological solutions are coming
Hari advocates for these individual behavioral changes, but says that these actions alone will not solve the problem. The problem is bigger than all of us individually.
“What I feel right now is like someone is throwing anti-itch powder at us all day long,” Hari said. “And then they lean forward and say, ‘Hey, dude, you should learn to meditate, then you wouldn’t itch all the time.’”
“But you have to stop throwing that harmful dust at me,” he said.
Now, some companies are trying to capitalize on the need to focus. Mark recently attended the Association of Computing Machinery’s CHI ’24 conference—the flagship conference in the field of human-computer interaction, showcasing cutting-edge technological designs—and was fascinated by prototypes designed to retain our attention by making it harder to use smartphones.
“There are a lot of techniques that create friction when using the phone, which I find very ironic,” he said. “People now realize that we have to retain our attention. These devices are absorbing our attention, so now there are innovations that make them harder to use.”
Some people are already tweaking their phone settings to make the screen less inviting and addictive. Others are rotating their phone multiple times to access social media by unlocking limited app usage (but if you put restrictions on most apps, you may need to lock the phone for more control). And to increase privacy, to prevent data tracking, some are turning off personalized ads on iPhones or choosing to remove the advertising ID on Android devices in the settings.
It’s important to fight back, Hari said. Even though corporations seek to control your attention, you have the power to develop healthier habits and live a more present and fruitful life, she said. “We are citizens of democracies and we own our own minds. And together we can take them back if we want to,” she said.
“Sustained attention is the foundation of all human achievement,” Hari said, noting that no athlete takes out their phone to check it in the middle of an Olympic event. “When you regain your attention, you really feel like you regain your superpowers.”
