Sign up for CNN’s Stress, But Less newsletter. Our six-part mindfulness guide informs and inspires you to reduce stress while learning how to manage it..
Every morning I wake up to a pile of notifications from media platforms. Then I scour newsfeeds while sipping my coffee. When I get to work, I’m bombarded with information and ads on X, formerly known as Twitter. I’m overwhelmed and pulled in multiple directions at once.
Despite my attempts to limit screen time with app limits, I often ignore them and blame myself for the time lost to mindlessly doomscrolling — all for the short-lived, feel-good dopamine hits of copious content I won’t remember. A movie or other long-form content feels like too much of a chore.
But I’m not the only one.
During my walk or train ride to work I see many other people looking down and staring at their phones. They are tuned into the digital world and constantly fighting for attention, to keep their eyes on the screen.
According to Dr. Gloria Mark, a computer science professor at the University of California, Irvine and author of “Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity,” the average focus time of individuals looking at a single screen dropped from 2.5 minutes in 2004 to an average of 47 seconds in 2021.
That drop 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, she found a strong correlation between higher stress and the frequency of switching attention.
While in most cases a declining attention span isn’t due to a personal failing (despite individual differences), experts say there are changes you can make to regain control of your mind.
Why Attention Span Is Decreasing
According to D. Graham Burnett, founder and director of the nonprofit organization dedicated to attention activism, the Institute for Sustained Attention, and co-founder of the Strother School of Radical Attention in Brooklyn, New York, the market has priced our attention by competing in an “attention economy” that spans the Internet, social networking, and our lifestyles. He calls this the “commodification of 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 in a kind of gold rush, a gigantic technologically intensive and heavily capitalized program of financial exploitation of our most intimate and fundamental attentional capacities.”
Burnett described the process as human fracking, saying this competition for our attention is toxic. The bombardment “destabilizes, pollutes and contaminates the very fabric of our existence and relationships,” he said.
Tracking ‘Likes’ Across Platforms
Mark also noted that algorithms that track individual behavior and interests are becoming increasingly sophisticated to create feeds and ads that follow everyone across platforms.
“Tech companies and ad marketing companies use this information to build profiles about us, and then they design algorithms that are designed to get our attention,” Mark said. This is the phenomenon of surveillance capitalism, as Shoshana Zuboff, a professor emerita at Harvard Business School in Boston, called it: collecting your data to track and predict your behavior.
“If I click on an ad for a pair of boots, I go to Facebook, I see the boots,” she said. “And if I go to The New York Times, I see the boots, and they follow me everywhere.”
Even your favorite TV shows have gotten shorter in length and clip length over the years, averaging one clip every four seconds, Mark said. “I’m not saying that’s causing short attention spans (but) it’s amplifying our already short attention spans when we’re watching a movie,” she said.
Online videos also use jump cuts as part of their aesthetic to keep attention. They remove filler words and natural pauses, Mark said, noting that this abruptness leads to impatience in normal human conversation.
Social media’s limitations on content length also create an attention dilemma. As users scroll through content at breakneck speed, they can develop expectations for rapid content shifts, Mark says. The goal is to keep you scrolling, because the longer you scroll, the more revenue these platforms generate. And there’s no financial incentive for platforms to change this model.
It’s not a personal failure
Technology isn’t the only factor affecting attention span, according to Johann Hariauthor 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 most important solution is to protect yourself in the environment and 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, had come to realize how they contributed to the current collapse of attention. “I think what struck me most is how sick they feel with guilt about what they’ve done,” he said.
How to Get Your Power Back
Removing all forms of media from your phone may not be necessary, but maintaining balance is crucial. “We’re social creatures,” Mark said, and so we respond to messages and use media to connect and communicate.
Below are Mark’s suggestions for taking back control of technology.
Become aware of your automatic behavior. Pay attention when you pick up your device: develop ‘meta-awareness’. That means recognizing what you are doing as it unfolds.
Make a plan to take breaks. They can be scheduled at logical times in your day to prevent burnout and replenish yourself. Mark recommends meditating, taking a walk, or reading something inspiring. Regular breaks are important, she said, to prevent “mental fatigue,” where people are more susceptible to distraction and losing control. She also recommended engaging in the practice of forethought, which involves imagining your future self and goals to stay on track with whatever you need to accomplish.
Know your chronotype. In her work, Mark has also discovered that people have personal rhythms of attention that ebb and flow throughout the day. Monitoring these “peaks and troughs of attention” should be used to effectively organize your tasks for the day. Keep a journal or understand your chronotype (your rhythm for activity throughout the day) to find these key energy points, she advised.
“We have a tank of attentional resources (that) runs out if we keep shifting our attention,” Mark said. “And it runs out if we force ourselves to focus on something difficult and effortful for too long (without taking breaks).”
Protect your focus. Hari recommended protecting your focus by using a time-locking container to lock your phone away for a set amount of time. He uses it for three hours a day to complete writing tasks and suggests working on longer periods without your phone. He also suggested using an app that sets time limits on social media or websites that you get addicted to.
Technological solutions are coming
Hari advocates for these individual behavioral changes, but he said that these actions alone will not solve the problem. The problem is bigger than any of us individually.
“I feel like someone’s been throwing itching powder on us all day,” Hari said. “And then they lean in and say, ‘Hey buddy, you need to learn to meditate so you won’t itch all the time.’
“But you must stop throwing this harmful powder on me,” he said.
Now, some companies are trying to cash in on the need to focus. Mark recently attended the Association of Computing Machinery’s CHI ’24 conference — the premier conference on human-computer interaction with cutting-edge technology designs — and was fascinated by prototypes designed to capture our attention by making it harder to use smartphones.
“There’s just a lot of technology that creates friction in using the phone, which I just find so ironic,” she said. “People are realizing that we need to maintain our attention. Our attention is just being sucked into these devices. And so now there are innovations to make it harder to use (them).”
Some people already change their phone’s settings to grayscale to make it less visually appealing and addictive. Others rotate their phone multiple times to access social media by unlocking the app’s restricted usage. (But if you set restrictions on most apps, you may want to lock your phone for self-control.) And for more privacy, to prevent data tracking, some people disable personalized ads on iPhones or choose to remove the advertising identifier on Android devices in the settings.
It’s important to fight back, Hari said. While companies may seek to control your attention, you do have the power to develop healthier habits and live more present, fruitful lives, he noted. “We are citizens of democracies. And we own our own minds. And together, we can take them back if we want to,” he said.
“Sustained attention is at the core of all human performance,” Hari said, noting that no athlete takes their phone with them to check during an Olympic event. “When you get your attention back, it’s really a feeling of reclaiming your superpowers.”
For more CNN news and newsletters, create an account at CNN.com