Why is it becoming increasingly difficult for us to concentrate?
The attention crisis
🏷️ Categories: Attention.
A few days ago, while traveling by bus, I saw a woman sitting by the window.
She had a book in her hands—one of those you rarely see outside a bookstore. She read a page, closed it, pulled out her phone, checked something. Then back to the book. Another page, another glance at the phone. The trip lasted an hour, but I didn’t see her spend more than five straight minutes inside the story she was trying to read.
It’s not just that concentrating seems harder now than before.
The data confirms that sustained attention is in free fall.
If you feel it’s becoming harder to stay focused, today you’ll understand—with scientific evidence—why it’s happening and what’s behind this decline in attention…
1. What Focused Attention Is and Why It Matters
When we talk about the loss of sustained attention, we’re talking about focused attention.
Focused attention works like a lens that sharpens one specific point while everything else fades into the background. You use it to consciously direct that mental lens toward something that interests you, while ignoring the rest. Like when, in the middle of a party, you can clearly hear your friend’s voice among all the noise and chatter.
The problem is that the amount of time we can hold that focus is shrinking.
That wouldn’t be such a big deal if we only needed focused attention to listen to a friend at a party—but unfortunately, we need it for much longer stretches. Attention is the foundation of how we learn, create, and connect deeply with others.
That’s where the impoverishment of attention starts to hurt.
Think of one of those conversations that completely absorb you, where your whole world narrows to what the other person is saying. Now compare it to a chat where the other person looks at their phone every 40 seconds.
The difference isn’t just about courtesy.
2. The Fall of Attention Span in the Digital Era
Here’s where the curve gets steep.
In 2004, Professor Gloria Mark, an expert in computer science and human behavior at the University of California, measured that the average time a person stayed focused on a single screen (for example, working on a document, reviewing a report, or checking a spreadsheet) before switching to another window or tab was 150 seconds (Mills, 2023).
In 2012, it was 75 seconds.
Today: 47 seconds on average.
On mobile phones, it’s even more fragmented: 228 daily interactions, each lasting about 10 seconds (D’Aurizio, 2024). A constant pecking of attention—like birds picking at seeds—tasting a bit of everything, without really savoring or consuming anything deeply.
And it’s not just about work screens.
Short videos (Reels, TikTok, Shorts) have created a consumption pattern of 3.5 hours per day on average for a large percentage of people, young and not-so-young alike. According to a recent study, there is a negative correlation (r = -0.45) between short-video consumption and attention span (Haliti-Sylaj, 2023). What does that mean?
More short-video consumption → less attention and more thinking errors.
3. Factors That Reduce Sustained Attention
There’s not just one culprit—it’s an entire ecosystem we’re immersed in.
Multitasking: Real multitasking doesn’t exist. It’s just constant task-switching that makes you much less efficient due to the attentional cost of refocusing. The more switches, the more resources you spend trying to focus again—and the worse your performance (D’Aurizio, 2024). On average, you lose up to 20 minutes each time you shift focus.
Dopamine loops in social media: Of the 228 average daily phone checks, 34% are for social networks. Not knowing when we’ll get a reward (a message, like, or comment) keeps us on alert in a dopamine-reward loop, which consumes mental resources just by staying vigilant (D’Aurizio, 2024).
Multimedia switching: Continuous scene changes every few seconds in videos and attention-splitting ads across long videos, TV, playlists, podcasts... all divide your attention (Mills, 2023).
Impact of remote work: Working from home makes it harder to focus due to domestic distractions, lack of visual cues for when colleagues might contact you, and the pressure to respond instantly—again consuming mental resources (Mills, 2023).
Sleep debt: Sleeping less shortens attention span and increases the tendency to choose passive activities like browsing social media, which demand little cognitive effort. The lack of rest in so many people’s routines diminishes memory and energy for serious cognitive challenges (Mills, 2023).
Attention is the resource upon which everything else is built.
If we follow the current trend, we’re heading toward a society of shallow interactions and fragmented learning. If we reverse it, we can redesign habits, environments, and tools that protect this invaluable resource.
Always keep this in mind: Attention is not infinite.
The world is competing more and more to steal tiny pieces of your attention—to fragment it even further—but training it remains a personal choice.
It’s up to you.
✍️ Your turn: What activities in your life deserve more deep attention than you currently give them? Personally, I don’t think it’s about demonizing technology or idealizing a silent temple retreat. It’s about using digital tools wisely. Sometimes it’s as simple as leaving your phone on silent in another room and not touching it for a while…
💭 Quote of the day: Listen more closely to the people around you. See everything as a source of learning, even the most mundane encounters. The world is still full of mystery. — 50 Cent, The 50th Law
See you next time! 👋
Referencias 📚
D’Aurizio, S. (2024). Are Attention Spans Actually Decreasing? — The Center for Brain, Mind and Society. The Center For Brain, Mind And Society. URL
Mills, K. (2023). Why our attention spans are shrinking (Gloria Mark; ep. 225). American Psychological Association. URL
Haliti-Sylaj, T., Sadiku, A. (2024). Impact of Short Reels on Attention Span and Academic Performance of Undergraduate Students. Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 10(3), 60-68. URL
Interesting article again, Alvaro. When my daughter was in school and I helped out in the class, I noticed how teachers would break up the day into segments of time for each exercise or lesson. One teacher who transferred from teaching kindergarten to third grade (from 5 year olds to 8 years olds) she kept the kindergarden time frame of 20 minutes pur lesson. She didn't give the children enough time to really focus on their work of the moment. It was maddening for me as a helper too.
More recently when my grandson was two, my daughter was concerned he was autistic because some "expert" said he appeared to be focused longer than "normal" children his age. I said, "This is a problem?" For some reason, focus was considered part of the attention deficit spectrum or something like that.