Not in focus

In the 11th Century, a movement called SufismA mystical Islamic belief and practice. developed in Islam. Its practitioners listen to music and hymns until they enter a trance-like state, called wajd, in which they can communicate directly with God. Some, known as the "whirling dervishesSufi whirling is a form of physically active meditation. Some say spinning in circles is imitation of planets orbiting the sun. ", reach this state by spinning in circles as they meditate. They can turn for hours without ever slowing down.

Today, the concentration and dedication needed for such a feat seems impossible to many. It is common to hear people complain that they no longer have any attention span.

This might seem like an unimportant issue compared with the other challenges posed to us by the modern world: the climate crisis, war in Ukraine, the dangers of automation. But experts warn our lack of focus can have severe consequences.

They say it prevents us from concentrating on pressing problems. A crisis occurs, we talk about it for a few days, and then we forget about it. We cannot invest any time and effort in discussing solutions.

We can even measure the loss of our ability to focus on important issues. In 2013, a global trend on Twitter would last 17.5 hours on average. By 2016, this had dropped to just 11.9 hours.¹

And it can be fatal for our work. It is estimated that every time we get distracted, it takes us 25 minutes to return to our task. This has been linked with a 50% drop in productivity.²

Scientists say the culprit is information overload. Every day we are bombarded with information from hundreds of sources: phones, laptops, TVs, tannoy systems - and most of all, social media.

Social media, experts say, could have been designed to reduce our attention spans. It throws unrelated short snippets of text and images at us in totally random order. 

Our brains learn to absorb these stimuliThings that provoke a reaction. passively. And because this is much easier than reading pages and pages of material in depth, we start to prioritise social media over books and work.

This is not a bug of social media: it is a feature. Social media companies make their money by selling our data to advertisers. The more time we spend on the sites, the more data we produce.

That is why the classic elements of social media sites are designed to be addictive, like pulling down at the top of the screen to refresh the feed. Insiders say this is the equivalent of pulling the lever of a slot machineAlso known as a fruit machine. A type of gambling machine based on chance. in a casino.

This is because the brain is attracted to unpredictability. And if it likes what it sees, it releases dopamineA hormone and neurotransmitter that plays several important roles in the brain and body, providing us with positive sensations, rewarding us for evolutionarily good behaviours like eating food., encouraging us to do the same thing again in hope of the same reward.³

Experts warn that among the addictive social media apps, TikTok is king. The traditional sites encourage engagement: likes, shares, retweets. That is more important to them than the amount of time you spend on the app. 

TikTok is different. Its aim is to keep you on the platform for as many minutes, hours and days as it can manage. And when we spend our lives consuming 30-second videos, we can lose the ability to focus on anything else.

Yes: Research suggests that we now spend our days in a state of constant distraction. We cannot apply ourselves to anything and this makes us bored, frustrated and overstimulated.

No: People still love films, they binge TV series, and novels are as popular as ever. We can still focus properly as long as we give ourselves breaks from social media.

Or... If our attention spans are shorter, social media is not solely to blame. People are more likely to look for distractions if they are already unhappy or depressed. Social media is a symptom, not a cause, of the mental health crisis.