MANY of us have some sense of what an “attention span” is. We may even be quietly convinced that ours is shorter than it used to be. The idea that it is harder to concentrate today than it was in the past is insidious, supported by anecdotal evidence – and probably our own experience – of being distracted by our personal devices, as well as creeping disquiet about our mounting reliance on technology in general.
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Stolen Focus: Why you can’t pay attention by Johann Hari was one of the top-selling non-fiction books of last year. In it, Hari blamed our fragmented attention on “powerful external forces”, predominantly tech giants, and called for a society-wide “rebellion” to reclaim it.
This response reflects the mainstream interest in the issue – not to mention the concern. But as Hari acknowledges (more than halfway through the book), there are, in fact, no long-term studies tracking attention spans over time, so we have no way of knowing whether technology has indeed caused our powers of concentration to deteriorate.
Gloria Mark’s first book, then, is a welcome injection of evidence, nuance and pragmatism into the discussion. Mark, a cognitive psychologist and professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, has been studying human-computer interaction since the mid-1990s, and distraction in particular since 2004. In Attention Span, she brings together the findings from her peer-reviewed scientific research with conclusions as to how they might be applied to find “focus for a fulfilling life”.
Over 15-odd years, Mark has empirically tracked patterns of “attention-switching”, showing how our focus roams about – between the physical world and the digital one, but also from task to task on our devices.
In 2004, when Mark conducted her first study on a range of office workers, she found that, when at work on a screen, they changed their attention every 2.5 minutes. By 2016, that was down to 47 seconds, where it has stayed.
These were time-intensive and, as such, often small-scale studies (of around 1500 people total, Mark estimates), itself proof of how challenging it is to extricate ourselves from screens, even for the purpose of research.
It took Mark six years to find an organisation willing to let her restrict access to email to some of its employees to assess its impact. She found a clear-cut case in favour of shutting it off, with reduced stress and attention-switching (which are related), and also a social benefit, as colleagues made the effort to communicate with each other in person. In another study, Mark found that participants checked their email 77 times a day on average. “Experiencing interruptions all day, every day, can certainly take its toll in terms of more drained resources and increased stress – a high cost,” she writes.
Another treatment of the subject could have been fearmongering or fatalistic about our future with tech, but Mark is even-handed and generally optimistic about our chances of taking back control of our devices and attention. It starts, however, with more realistic expectations.
In Attention Span, she dismantles misconceptions, such as that all time-wasting on screens is negative, or that we should always be aspiring to be focused or in psychological “flow” (as championed by Hari) when at work on a computer.
Instead, Mark advises cultivating awareness of our own individual rhythms of attention and structuring days so that work demanding concentration or creativity aligns with peaks of focus, while less intensive tasks are planned for when we are at an ebb.
In focusing on practical strategies rather than silver-bullet or short-term solutions like “digital detoxes”, Attention Span is a valuable guide to how to balance work and well-being in a world increasingly dependent on tech. Mark also emphasises the need to take breaks: instead of your phone stealing your attention, it could be that you are simply exhausted.
Though technology may enable us to be more productive, our cognitive resources are limited, says Mark. Part of reclaiming our attention may be accepting we must simply attempt less.
Elle Hunt is a writer based in Norwich, UK
