science-attention-span

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May I have your attention, please? I’ll try and be quick, as I probably only have about 47 seconds before your mind starts wandering. That, according to psychologist Dr Gloria Mark, from the University of California, Irvine, is now our average attention span, based on her latest study of people’s use of screens in the workplace.

When her team conducted a similar study back in 2004 (before anyone had a smartphone and there was no such thing as TikTok) we could focus for two and a half minutes before wanting to switch to something new.
As one recent survey from the Centre for Attention Studies at King’s College London suggests, nearly half the population now feel as if theirs is worse than it was. With the ever-present pull of our emails (we check them 77 times a day, according to Mark’s research) and social media (up to 237 times a day for some), it’s easy to see why.