Our Dwindling Attention Spans

Written by Hannah Bohn | Designed by Ting Wei-Li | Graphic by Emily Snisarenko

We live in a fast-paced society that rotates in a ceaseless cycle of new technological enhancements, building more ways to connect to infinite outputs of news and entertainment. Of course, technology makes things quicker and easier; it maximizes productivity and functionality while limiting barriers to carrying out tasks and communicating. We’ve all heard conversations about how today’s culture is saturated with excessive screen time, especially when it comes to social media use. We are a people united by our shared access to a boundless online world. I can remember when the debate about the dangers of abundant phone use first entered my life. It was sometime around high school, and social media was far past its infancy stage. My peers and I were totally immersed in the maintenance of our online identities, interacting in an artificial bubble of likes and comments. As teens, it’s easy to get caught up in a glossy virtual world that endlessly spins in a feedback loop of content and validation. Since then, I’ve developed a deep awareness of the various consequences attached to excessive time spent plugged-in, and I learned a lot about how essential it is to not only moderate my phone use but to be deliberate about how I use technology. by Hannah Bohn | designed by Ting Wei Li | graphic by Jo Doe As our dependence on technology to occupy our mind grows stronger, we become less aware of how much of our time is actually being drained. The “in-between” moments of our daily lives, when we wait for the train or ride an elevator, are easily ripped from us by these simple decisions to disengage from our surroundings and tap into something less real.

We need to be cautious of constantly filling in the calm moments life grants us. Those are the ones that ultimately make up much of what our lives really are. More than ever, we are prompted to continually distract ourselves through our devices. Technology offers so many built-in methods to stay stimulated while disassociating from the present. Consequently, our attention spans are withering away, and our cognitive capacity is jeopardized. Our ability to concentrate has reduced to an eight second period on average, which is lower than the range of a goldfish, according to a new study by Microsoft Corp. to reveal the impact of our digitized lifestyle on the brain. While sitting on the train last week for a mere five minutes, I found myself locating a to-do list in my mind of productive activities I could execute when in a public space. I quickly ran through the available items—check my email, respond to overdue texts, organize my spotify playlists, call a loved one—just to realize how much pressure I put on maximizing every snippet of free time to be “efficient.” I am perpetually, and helplessly, in motion. As a society, we have normalized the behavior of seeking out something external to alter our minds’ current emotional condition and temporarily change the way we feel. American culture leans more and more toward the glorification of immediate and short-term pleasure and accelerates a process of fleeting satisfaction, followed by disappointment and the need for more. We fixate on these small adrenaline rushes and immediate rewards received through our phones, crowding our thoughts with outside input. Modern life plays out to the sound of technology, and this impacts our ability to exist in the absence of constant entertainment and preoccupation. Simply sitting with ourselves, granting our minds the space to be still, is an overlooked skill that we’ve been socialized out of. We should turn to our phones with intention, engaging with technology purposefully, rather than using it as a meaningless filler to pull us away from what’s around us.