Can You Focus On This – for 8 Seconds?
By Shlomo Maital
Technology is changed and adapted by human thought. But the process is circular — technology also changes human thought and behavior. For instance, the rapid-fire images of MTV music videos, which change several times a second, caught on with young people. Same with smartphones – texting, without verbs and nouns, with emojis. Instant. Fast.
A study of Canadian media consumption by Microsoft, quoted in Timothy Egan’s New York Times Op-Ed (Jan 23-24/2016) found that the average attention span (“the amount of concentrated time on a task without becoming distracted) has declined from 12 seconds in the year 2000, to 8 seconds in 2015. “We now have a shorter attention span than goldfish”, Egan quotes the study.
Here at my university Technion, Sarah Katzir, who interacts with students daily, recently spoke about this ever-shorter attention span as a major problem for university instructors. Students simply are not able to stay focused for an entire 50 – minute class. And when instructors ban their use of smartphones in class, there is an outcry heard throughout my country.
“Our devices have rewired our brains,” Egan notes. “The trash flows, unfiltered, along with the relevant stuff, in an eternal stream. And the last hit of dopamine only accelerates the need for another one.” In other words – our ever-shorter attention spans are actually a kind of addiction, a need for a shot of ‘dopamine’ at ever-shorter intervals, from some new stimulus.
Antidotes? Egan has two. First, gardening. “Working the ground, there is no instant gratification”. Planting, he notes, forces you to think in half-year increments, at least. Second, deep reading. Curl up with an 800-page tome. Try, Gibbon’s history of the Roman empire. Will Durant’s history of the world. Or, Egan’s choice, William Manchester’s massive biography of Winston Churchill. Each of us can fight that short attention span, and at the least, become as focused as… goldfish.
TIMnovate 
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February 2, 2016 at 6:15 pm
johnpersico
Neil Postman wrote a good book back in 1985 on the changes you describe and the move towards more entertainment in content needed to keep the attention of Generation Y and Z. I notice in my classes that writing skills have deteriorated but I think visual skills are in the ascendancy among today’s youth. Postman’s book was aptly titled “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” As a college instructor, I see the change in student values as very different and ones I have a hard time relating to. However, I think we must understand them and ultimately accept them if we want to make any progress because these values are not going to go back to any sort of “good old days” that we might like to fantasize about.. By the way Dr. Maital, I just finished reading your book “Executive Economics.” It was a great read. Wonderful and very useful ideas. I wish I had read your book 20 years ago. You were certainly ahead of the curve in recognizing the importance of the emerging school of behavioral economics as well as the need for more cooperation in business.
February 8, 2016 at 10:53 am
timnovate
Thank you very much, John! Shlomo
February 13, 2016 at 12:07 am
frank Sadofsky
Very interesting. I must learn to pay more attention. Maybe I will understand the detection of gravity waves dating back to the collision of two black holes.