The Death of Attention Span

Interacting with my contemporaries nowadays tends to feel like a chore. For example, trying to find new games to play. The second that a part of the game becomes even a little bit slow, they are ready to call it quits. In fact, anything that we do together for a long time seems slow to them. Dialogue in a movie, videos without fast cuts and editing, anything that took just a little bit too long would send them back to their phone screen. The realization of this sort of shook me and I began to notice it more and more often. One day I decided to look up this attention span problem and began to realize that it was not just my group of friends. It was everyone. With the rise of short form and really easily accessible digital content in general, the average attention span is decreasing.

If you've ever heard of this attention span problem you probably have heard of one of the biggest sources, TikTok. However, TikTok is not the only contributing factor. According to research done by Wyzowl, “our attention span has markedly decreased in just 15 years. In 2000, it was 12 seconds. Now, 15 years later, it’s shrunk significantly to 8.25 seconds. In fact, scientists reckon we now have shorter attention spans than goldfish, who are able to focus on a task or object for 9 seconds”(Wyzowl). This works to show how TikTok and short form content is not the only thing hurting attention span, it's all content. There’s an old saying which I believe illustrates this phrase fairly well “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times”. Due to advances in technology, it is very reasonable to say that we are in somewhat good times. The ability for us to see more and more videos and get dopamine from them has led to, as said in the quote, weak men. What I hope I have made quite obvious so far is how it is phones that are leading to this problem. Phones have almost everything you could ever need to keep your attention. Whether it's notifications which you feel compelled to click, or algorithms continuously feeding you videos you'll love. All of these little interactions and things give you dopamine when they occur. This has led to us not really being able to take situations without the constant dopamine stream well. In fact, according to Time Magazine, “The survey also confirmed generational differences for mobile use; for example, 77% of people aged 18 to 24 responded ‘yes’ when asked, ‘When nothing is occupying my attention, the first thing I do is reach for my phone,’ compared with only 10% of those over the age of 65”(Ducharme). This further supports the mentioned quote as the younger and more technologically influenced generation has clearly been impacted by technology. The easier times have led to a need for the phone and an inability to hold attention to much of anything for a given period of time.

Though humanities ability to focus is at an all time low, there are certainly ways to fix this issue. The limiting of screens and a general increase in the time you spend on your phone is a great step in helping you recover your attention span. The lowering of attention spans is certainly an epidemic around the world, a plague which is not hard to prevent. So the next time you think of your phone, think of sparing your reaction time instead.