How does social media affect our attention spans?

Nowadays, social media has become an integral part of people’s lives all over the globe. It’s influenced how we reason, communicate, dress, decode, compare, and persuade others. The advent of social media has allowed us to develop more personal and meaningful relationships with those who share our passions and our geographic proximity. Technology has made it simpler to maintain relationships with those who would otherwise fade from our lives entirely. It removes the need for people to be in close physical proximity to form meaningful relationships with one another. While there are many ways in which social media has improved our daily lives, there are also some aspects of human behaviour that have evolved as a result of this new medium that can be viewed negatively.

Nowadays, we check our social media accounts more frequently than we give them credit for. We all tend to grossly underestimate how much time we actually spend on social media compared to how much time we believe we spend. If we’re bored during a movie’s slow scene or while waiting for our food to heat in the microwave, we automatically reach for our phones.

Our attention span has been one of the most impacted facets of human behaviour since the rise of social media. People’s attention spans and concentration have suffered as a result of their increased propensity to be distracted by social media.

Attention spans are changing but it isn’t because we are getting worse at focusing. Instead, our digital environment is making it hard for us to focus on one task at a time. A study conducted by the Technical University of Denmark found that our collective attention spans are decreasing due to the amount of information presented to us at all times. On a regular day we are being bombarded with so many pieces of information and news about external affairs that our human brain can’t allocate time for productive work and interpersonal relationships. Social media, news channels and ads are constantly competing for our attention which is why it’s becoming harder and harder to give our selective attention to a task. We’re all surviving on divided attention, trying to focus on more than two things at once and often failing to do so.

Dr. King- a psychologist from Princeton University, explained that she is not necessarily confident that social media use itself is causing decreasing attention span, but our habit is what may be the driving factor behind this change in behavior. Almost every one of us is used to shorter clips and videos on social media. That may be one of the most important reasons for the advancement of web series with shorter episodes, reels and YouTube shorts. We’ve started to get easily bored and distracted by longer content like a documentary or a movie because our brain is continuously looking for instant pleasure. The neuroscientific driver of this pleasure is a neurotransmitter called Dopamine. It makes us feel good and is released every time we do something rewarding. Companies like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook etc. try to induce the naturally stimulating drug in our brain by introducing catchy clickbaits, celebrity gossip, likes, comments and followers. Every like, follow, or even a simple notification releases a small burst of euphoria that reinforces us to seek pleasure. When we watch something interesting, we get a dopamine hit unlike reading something dull and long like a book. This might be responsible for the popularization of blogs which are short, precise and catchy as compared to books or novels.

Checking our phones after a vibration has become an involuntary action just like pulling our hand back when something pricks us- the only difference is that the latter one is done for protection while the former one might lead to a disastrous addiction. Being locked up in our homes for two years due to covid has made us even more addicted to social media which eventually affected our attention spans. People working from home couldn’t resist opening their phones in the middle of a zoom call when the meetings got boring. This led to low levels of productivity and a lack of interpersonal relationships. Along with working class people, even students believed that they could multitask during their online classes, but it was constantly proven they couldn’t. Instead, it became harder for them to pay attention. That is the reason why some schools and colleges across the country are considering lectures of shorter length to adjust to the affected attention spans of students post covid.

A research study has also confirmed generational differences for mobile use, for example- 77% of the respondents aged, 18 to 24 responded “yes” to “When nothing is occupying my attention, I reach for my phone.” In contrast to  10% of the people aged over 65. While social media itself doesn’t directly decrease attention spans, habitual use of social media while attempting to multitask does. It contributes to an increased need for stimulation and decreased ability to absorb all the information at once.

Some of us have realized the impact of social media on our focus and productivity levels, along with our mental health and have introduced or spread awareness about breaks, limited usage and detox lifestyles which have yielded excellent results. While the rest of us are still under the shadow, without realizing the capability of phones on our cognitive health. The aim of this article was to shed light on the working of social media and how it influences our minds. If we are consciously aware of our actions and what it does to us as a humankind, it would lead us to a path of good mental and physical health.

And now congratulate yourself for concentrating long enough to make it through this article.

(This article is written by Aashi Saraiya, a student of Psychology and volunteer at the Vandrevala Foundation. In her free time she loves to read and play sports)