Seduced by distraction: How social media has shortened

our attention spans

Jenna Clarke

Jason Howie via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

A recent study by Microsoft discovered that

from 2000 to 2013, the average attention span

has dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds. That’s 1 second shorter than a goldfish!

Cesar Astudillo via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

[1]

Moreover, Microsoft also found SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE to be one of the TOP factors that impact our attention span.

Jason Howie via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

[2]

This is due to the fact that social networking sites allow for

instant gratification, which encourages the brain to re-wire and

operate under these unrealistic timescales.

Alan Reeves via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

[3]

“It’s so hard to resist the life that the social-media machine has created for us, one in which we are both consumer and producer, sharing generously of our own creative energy and expending our attention in a self-nourishing loop, from which someone else – Google, Facebook, Apple – plucks the profit.”

[4]

Erin Anderssen

Travis Isaacs via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

Shorter attention spans, predominantly exhibited

amongst Generations Y and Z, have resulted in the

concept known as “continuous partial attention”;

the increasingly dispersed nature of attention in

online environments.

Kat N.L.M. via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

[5]

Arguably, could the simultaneous use of different social media platforms increase

efficiency and productivity in our daily lives?

mkhmarketing via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

Research suggests that “multi-media tasking”;

the consumption of multiple media forms, does

not encourage productivity, and is associated

with negative psychosocial and cognitive

impacts.

Johan Larsson via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

[6]

A Stanford university study found that when distracting elements were added to an experiment, heavy media multitaskers were 77 milliseconds slower than their light multimedia counterparts at identifying changes in pattern.

Johan Larsson via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

[7]

Social media has also negatively affected our reading abilities.

poppet with a camera via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

Humans appear to be developing “digital brains” that are re-wired to quickly disseminate online information.

This phenomenon is competing with the traditional form of deep reading.

Daniel Go via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

[8]

Further, the impacts of social media on our attention span have

resulted in the phenomenon known as “multi-communicating.”

Dustin O’Donnell Design via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

“We live in a time of multi-communicating,

where no one person gets personal attention for

long. It’s the institutionalization of rudeness and

with the healthy growth of smartphone usage in

Canada – 47 per cent own one now, up from 34

per cent in 2012 – it’s only going to get worse.”

Leah Eichler

Sean MacEntee via Flickr

Creative Commons Attribution License

[9]

“It is the malady of modernity. We

have gone from the Iron Age to the

Industrial Age to the Information

Age to the Age of Interruption.” ~ Thomas Friedman

patriziasoliani via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

[10]

A Kaiser Family Foundation study found that children ages 8 to 18 spend 7 hours and 38 minutes a day on social media.

Brad Flickinger via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

[11]

Brad Flickinger via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

Therefore, how will social media affect brain development

and cognitive abilities in younger generations?

“If the young brain is exposed from the outset to a world of fast

action and reaction, of instant new screen images flashing up with

the press of a key, such rapid interchange might accustom the brain

to operate over such timescales. Perhaps when in the real world

such responses are not immediately forthcoming, we will see such

behaviours and call them attention-deficit disorder.”

Oxford University professor and neuroscientist Susan Greenfield warns:

[12]

Cuncun Wijaya via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

As the prior evidence suggests, it appears that today’s

technologically dependent society has been “seduced by distraction”, namely through the use of social media.

Powerpoint clipart

In order to combat these changes, how can we save ourselves from “drowning” in the social

media pool, and re-build our attention spans?

mkhmarketing via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

(1) Enforce parental controls to limit children’s social media activity, and

encourage them to use their allotted online time for educational purposes.

[13]

DVIDSHUB via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

(2) Create sacred “device free zones” that will engage conversation,

rather than connection. [14]

Victor Bezrukov via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

(3) Discipline yourself, and strike a balance between online and offline activities in order to

promote focus, contemplation and self reflection. [15]

Dani Ihtatho via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

Works Cited

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