Attention in the Age of Distraction

Read the latest edition of The Learning Team focused on the attention economy and some of the research around distraction in a digitally saturated age. You can find the full special edition here and read my editorial below.

Have you ever found yourself feeling the constant need to check your smartphone(s) for the latest email, tweet text or update? According to a 2015 research study by Microsoft, our attention span has been reduced to that of a goldfish, less than eight seconds, by the numerous clicks, hyperlinks and constant demands of our digitally drenched mobile lives.

Eight seconds is approximately the amount of time it took you to read up to this point in my editorial. If you are still with me then let's continue. In the year 2000 we had a 12-second attention span; as our screens have increasingly colonized our lives, our attention span has steadily diminished.

Since we have only so much attention to go around, it has become a valuable resource in our digitally saturated era. It has, in fact, become a new field of study known as “attention economics.” This edition of The Learning Team explores how human beings manage information and the implications of our new habits of mind on society and on learning.

It is an important conversation to follow as the French government recently (December 2017) banned all mobile phone use in schools for students 15 years of age and younger. In France this ban is being discussed as a matter of public health, where distraction from smartphones has been blamed for negative impacts on student achievement and declines in outdoor free play.

You may hear people argue that children are multitaskers and able to easily navigate the world’s many digital distractions, but multitasking is a myth. A large body of research has documented the finite abilities of human beings, old and young, to take on different activities simultaneously. What we are learning is that human beings can only switch from one task to another—a process called switch-tasking. We may try to pay simultaneous attention to many things, but in fact we are only paying a “continuous partial attention” to that which is before us. This is not a great strategy for learning, nor is it a productive one for interacting with others and building relationships.

As Dr. Sherry Turkle, MIT professor and authorof Alone Together, states, “Teenagers talk about the idea of having each other's ‘full attention.’ They grew up in a culture of distraction. They remember their parents were on cellphones when they were pushed on swings as toddlers. Now, their parents text at the dinner table and don’t look up from their BlackBerry when they come for end-of-school day pickup.”

Many questions about the impact of the attention economy and digital distraction on children are starting to bubble up across Canada. Some of my more immediate questions are: To what extent are smartphones, apps, websites and social media being uniquely engineered to subconsciously hook and hold our attention (a.k.a. brain hacking)? How will the growing economy for our children’s attention affect their habits of mind and learned abilities to critically reason and/or read deeply as they grow into adulthood? To what extent is digital distraction leading to more incidents of physical and emotional neglect? Are there epigenetic effects (inherited changes in gene expression) if parents are so negatively distracted from their babies that it results in new toxic stressors? Is distraction to be found on a continuum towards digital addiction?

We are all guilty of being alone together.
Time to pay attention.
Be present.
🙂