Focus. My ability to focus is shot. I jump between books, can’t finish a movie, and even audiobooks can’t keep me hooked. (I’ve recently heard from readers that my audiobooks have been un-put-downable–more power to them–but I’m struggling.)
With life events taking their toll, I thought it was the stress that wouldn’t let me finish more than a page or two in a book. Or the biological changes in my body. Or the increasingly Orwellian world. Take your pick.
Turns out, I’m Not alone. I’m not the only one who can’t focus: readers who don’t have immediate stressors on a daily basis, in all age groups, in different kinds of situations find their attention span reduced. In a book group I recently visited, there was much empathy and commiseration when I confessed to how beleagured my focus has been.
Anecdotal evidence says it is more common with readers who are perpetually online, and there’s irrefutable evidence now that social media affects attention spans. This article speaks of the impact:
The growing social media addiction is fuelling a worldwide decline in attention spans. In an interview with the American Psychological Association, Gloria Mark, a psychologist and chancellor’s professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, shared alarming statistics from her study on global attention spans.
Mark noted that the average global attention span in 2004 was 2.5 minutes, which dropped to 75 seconds by 2012, and has since decreased to 47 seconds over the past 5–6 years. However, attention spans are not uniform. According to Mark, they consist of both focused attention and rote activity, which is repeated actions with little required thinking.
In focused attention, individuals are actively and consciously engaged in a task, such as reading a complex article. In contrast, rote activities involve tasks that are less challenging, like playing video games or scrolling through social media, which accounts for most screen time.
A shrinking attention span causes people to switch their focus between tasks more frequently. Mark hypothesized that attention switching would potentially increase stress levels, as measured by elevated blood pressure, and increase the likelihood of making errors while completing tasks. Mark’s correlation study revealed that constant attention shifting due to compromised attention spans led participants to make more errors, require more time, and experience greater stress.
So it’s not my imagination. My ability to focus has gone down ever since I joined social media and stayed on it for longer periods.
I’ve taken steps to cut down drastically on social media use. Spending more time on reading and writing (creative or otherwise) while offline has helped. I no longer feel the need to take frequent pauses (I was stopping and starting every five minutes a few months ago) in between my writing or reading sprints. I’m able to go on for half an hour (or even up to an hour, in some cases) before my body reminds me to stretch and take a break.
Nature has been another healer. I find that taking a walk in nature, putting one foot in front of the other in one of Singapore’s parks can help improve my attention span like nothing else.
I make a game of it, of noticing the little things, the colorful wildfowl pecking in the grass, white butterflies like pale ghosts among the flowers, shiny fish playing in the murky tidepools, the curved spines of long dried leaves by the wayside, stray clouds hanging like white blankets in the clear skies, sunbirds flitting from one bush to another, the warbles of the irrepressible mynahs, the occasional lizard glistening in the humid, moisture-laden morning, the red-eared terrapins gathered on a sunny rock, and yes, those water monitors ambling out of the water, their forked tongues tasting the air.
Watching, noticing, being in the present moment boosts my ability to focus.
Who knows, maybe there will be a day when we’ll all tire of the internet and limit our time online, building communities with the humans around us and hanging out in nature. I can live in hope, right?
Social media may not be the only cause of declining attention spans. The world seemingly going to hell in a handbasket is a low-grade stressor for all of us, and makes it difficult to focus on anything that demands sustained attention. Here’s hoping my lack of focus and the world in turmoil are both a current phase, not a lasting change.
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What about you? Are you able to focus just as you used to in the pre-internet days (in case you were born long before internet became as much a part of life as breathing)? Are you reducing your time on social media?
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My focus was all over the place until last year. I decided to quit social media, and intentionally spend time on things I love. Reading, writing and other creative things. I’ve gotten so much better at it now.
47 secs Oh my god, I can so relate to that. I am at the moment reading 5 books… I do not know why. What is this unhinged behaviour! You know how millenials are taking up hobbies like gardening and embroidery, I feel after a point the new generation will try to go back to old way of life – but give it some fancy gen-z type of name.
Am I able to focus? Yes, but only when I am working on an illustration or practicing yoga. Otherwise, my hands reach for the phone before I can stop myself. I am working on myself, but the mind sometimes has a mind of its own and refuses to pay heed and wonders what this or that ping was about every time the phone goes ‘ting’!
The FOMO is real! Whenever I get a new message, I automatically think of it as urgent and make that an excuse to pick up my phone every few minutes. Even putting it on silent mode doesn’t always work because I begin worrying that I’ve missed out on something important. Instead, I’ve taken to leaving it in another room and having my husband notify me if I get a call that I need to take.
Coming from a generation that did not grow up on computers, I was taken a little by surprise by how frequently I reach out for my phone. Which is why I can understand how hard it must be for teens and children these days who have grown up with technology. There’s no way around it apart from making a conscious effort to keep oneself focused.
I can relate! I was alarmed at how many hours I spent scrolling, especially considering that I went years before getting my first handphone. It’s become so normal to be glued to our screens and to use technology as a shield from real interactions. The shortening attention span is just one item in a long list of side effects.
I, too, have to make an effort to focus. Just like you I keep my tjme limit for SM. It’s inevitable and one cannot skip it but I keep unnecessary scrolling away and only use my fifteen minutes on every app to interact with content I like. But I see where you’re coming from. We are all dealing with it.
It’s a little scary to think of how social media-dependent we’ve become over the years.
Indeed!
Such a poignant post Damyanti. I’m with all you said. And yes, my focus has faded dramatically. It takes much longer to motivate myself to write sometimes. My discipline is undisciplined. The world is spinning for sure. But yes, I dramatically cut down social media. Seriously, my blood pressure was even higher. Just verify and check what you read online and use reliable sources. Scroll past the noise. 🙂
Absolutely, I’m so relieved that I finally learned to drown it out. Of course, there are things which slip through the cracks — glaring articles about daily tragedies or fake news being touted as real. It’s hard to avoid completely, but getting off social media certainly helps.
I agree. I’ve certainly limited my time there. 🙂
Hi Damyanti – I’ve too much on my plate … which frankly isn’t very much … I don’t do social media, but what’s going on in the world always impinges – I struggle to catch my tail and then can more easily move along … soon I have to get my act into gear. A couple of things must give – great tips re nature and taking one moment at a time – cheers … we’ll get there! All the best – Hilary
I’m sorry to hear that, Hilary. We’re living in an overwhelming time, and it can be so difficult to stay focused when everything seems designed to divide our attention. I hope you manage to sort through the chaos and find your flow. All the best to you, too!
Uh, sorry, what was that?
🤣🤣
I’m on the desktop computer many hours a day (preferably doing my writing of fiction), but I have zero interest in scrolling on the phone with its tiny screen, so I use the Mac Air as a tool. I am on FB – because my support groups are, and there’s someone available pretty much 24/7.
I use the app Freedom to block access to the internet when I’m writing – or I’ll bail when things are tough. Instead, at that time if I REALLY need information, I get it on the phone quickly, and get back off and back to work. Otherwise, placeholder and I’ll look it up later.
I don’t read many books lately because I have a chronic illness which severely limits my available energy (ME/CFS), and I can either read or write with what I have – so if I possibly can, I use that little bit of energy to work on fiction. I don’t have enough energy to both read and write, and I want to finish my mainstream trilogy.
The thing that sometimes catches me happens before I block the cute little videos on FB – and it takes me a while to disengage. Other than that, and reading the papers (NOT during writing time), and the logistics of self-managing said illness, I don’t have a problem with the internet – it’s mostly garbage.
What I have the problem with is dealing with my brain and body that are damaged and not very functional at the best of times.
I have my protocols – aim for a 3-5 hour block of writing time, and then I’ve probably done as much as I can toward my goal for that day. I’d work longer if that helped, but it doesn’t.
I’m doing the best that I can, dealing with a painful and inconvenient illness, and writing when I have the wherewithal to do so. The STORY is coming along slowly but nicely.
I’m so glad to hear that the story is coming along, and I so admire your commitment. I’ve had my fair share of having to work through an illness and stay hunched over my keyboard, despite chronic pain driving me to distraction, and it never gets easier. But every step forward and every word written, no matter how short, is something to be proud of. Setting writing protocols and knowing our limitations is so important — I have a bad habit of overworking myself and not realizing how much damage I’m doing until after the session is over. Like you, I’ve had to be stricter about my practice. Thank you for sharing and wishing you all the best with your health and your writing!
This attention deficit age has been building up for a long time now Damyanti. The Social Scientist Toffler whose works I read long ago predicted that future generations would suffer from the “hurry up handshake” which he went on to explain was evidenced in the quick handshake pulling the hand behind him to move the person behind them on to a brief encounter with the next person. To watch one of my grandchildren sitting beside her friend texting her friend rather than talking to her is another startling evidence our generation is moving into a dysfunctional future where we treat people like Siri or Hey Google or whatever. This makes our younger generation the lonliest generation we have even seen and it leads to sad endings at times. It requires discipline to sit down with neighbors, friends and workers to have a good friendly conversation develop real friends rather than online friends as the only friends and leave social media alone for periods of rest and recouperation.
Oh dear, that’s sad to hear, Ian. I’ve seen something similar with some of my relatives, where they rely on texting one another despite being in the same house. In other scenarios, my husband and I will go out to a restaurant and see a whole family sitting silently and texting on their phones until their food arrives. Only then do they put away the phones and look at one another. It’s become so common.
My attention span in the past few years is definitely poor, and yes, I do attribute it primarily to time spent online, among other things. I am trying to spend less time online but it’s a slow process to pull away.
I fully understand. It took a frustrating amount of time for me to finally detach myself from it, but I’m so grateful I did. Best of luck with your process!
Then I guess I am grateful I have pulled away a bit from online activities. I enjoyed them and the connections, but focusing on real life requires more of my attention.
When I found that I was making my online life more of a priority than my real one, I knew it was time to step back.
Definitely my focus has shrunk. The blogosphere is as close as I come to social media but the addiction of news updates (which impinge on my sanity) is constant. Aaaargh.
And a walk in nature makes a huge difference. A positive difference.
My news feed was one of the hardest things to stop scrolling through. Article after article of bad news, and I found it almost impossible to look away. The internet is a dangerous thing. Thank goodness for nature walks and fresh air!
I consider myself fortunate that I was born pre-internet, so I can remember what that sustained focus was like. I am distracted by the horrendous state of our country. I would love to spend less time on social media.
Climbing out of the social media rabbit hole was difficult, but so worth it.
I’ll have to keep that option in the front of my mind.
A little more distracted than usual, but I blame that on the US new administration. I can’t blink without missing five things he’s done to fix our broken country. It’s hard to focus on something as silly as writing fiction.
Sometimes my writing-related worries and obstacles feel so overwhelming — then I look at the state of the world, and my other fears pale in comparison. It’s tough to find a neutral state.