By Yael Tangir, Business Editor
Think back to the last time you were bored, waiting in line for coffee, sitting on the subway, or walking across campus. Did you stare into space, or did you grab your phone? For most of us, boredom doesn’t last long. The urge to scroll has become second nature.
In 2015, Microsoft Canada made headlines claiming human attention spans had dropped to eight seconds, shorter than that of a goldfish. The story spread fast, but psychologists quickly pointed out the comparison was misleading: Microsoft never actually measured attention spans, and the goldfish analogy wasn’t scientific. In reality, the truth is more nuanced. Humans can focus for hours — binge-watch entire shows, or complete demanding projects — but attention is increasingly fragmented. We switch between dozens of apps, tabs and notifications, often without realizing it. Gloria Mark, a University of California, Irvine professor studying digital behavior, found that in 2004, workers stayed on a single task for about two and a half minutes. By 2012, this dropped to 75 seconds. Today, the average amount of time spent on one task is just 47 seconds, and once we switch, it can take more than 20 minutes to fully refocus. Social media platforms thrive on this fragmented attention and the constant urge to switch tasks. TikTok’s 15-second videos pioneered micro-attention cycles; Instagram, YouTube and even LinkedIn followed suit. Every swipe, scroll and click is engineered to keep users engaged. More engagement means more ads seen, more data collected and more revenue earned. Companies take advantage of your wandering focus to boost their profit.
Deloitte’s 2025 Digital Media Trends report finds adults in the United States spend nearly six hours daily on digital media, from social platforms to streaming and games. Nielsen, a global audience measurement and data analytics company calls this “scattered audiences,” where attention is no longer measured in hours, but in moments. Traditional longer-form advertising is struggling, so brands have adapted by implementing memes, influencer shoutouts, vertical video ads and anything that grabs attention in an instant.
Social media’s ability to capitalize on our distractibility has made people less productive. A 2022 Harvard Business Review study found that digital workers switch between apps and websites 1,200 times a day, wasting nearly four hours a week just getting back on track. Even constant notifications from email, Slack, and Teams drain employee focus. Cal Newport calls this the “hyperactive hive mind.” Employees are busy, but rarely doing productive, meaningful work.
Students also face challenges regarding attention spans. Laptops, with chat windows, music and notifications, compete for attention during lectures. Multitasking is mostly an illusion; the brain doesn’t truly multitask, it just switches between areas of focus, which reduces performance quality and increases mistakes. According to the Cleveland Clinic, humans are “wired to be monotaskers,” and what we perceive as multitasking is really rapid task-switching that lowers efficiency. Whether at work, school, or leisure, our priorities are constantly being pulled in multiple directions, and businesses take advantage of this.
Distraction isn’t a side effect; it’s the business model. Infinite scroll, autoplay and push notifications are designed to keep us hooked. More time spent scrolling means more ads seen, more data collected and more revenue earned. In fact, companies employ behavioral scientists to fine-tune features and capture every extra minute of attention. Your wandering focus is their profit center.
But not everyone is willing to stay hooked. In response to the increased popularity of short-form content, tools and strategies designed to reclaim focus are gaining traction. Focus apps like Forest, which rewards users for staying off their phones by growing virtual trees, and Freedom, which blocks distracting websites and apps, have taken off, as well as “dumb phones” that strip notifications and limit usage to calls and texts.
Deloitte reports that nearly 40% of Gen Z adults in the U.S. have intentionally reduced social media use in the past year. Universities experiment with laptop bans in lectures. Companies trial meeting-free afternoons or limited email windows, all in the hopes of regaining attention spans and getting back to meaningful, productive work.
Digital distraction shows no signs of slowing, but awareness is increasing. By understanding how attention drives business and taking deliberate steps to protect focus, we can turn our attention back to things that matter, things that serve us.
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