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Help! What’s Happened to My Attention Span?
“The average attention span of the modern human being is about half as long as whatever you’re trying to tell them.” — Meg Rosoff
You used to read books in bed, a whole chapter at a time.
You could sit through a movie without checking your phone, cook dinner without plugging into a podcast (and missing half of it), enjoy a drink with a friend without grabbing your phone the second they go to the bathroom.
You could chat to your partner or the kids without losing your train of thought, you could walk into a room and remember why you’re there. You could finish cleaning the loo instead of starting five other chores and completing none.
It’s easy to joke about about it — “Haha, I have the attention span of a gold fish” — but behind the humour is a troubling trend.
We’re living in a world that hijacks our focus. Notifications, pop-ups, ads, pings and flashes—entertainment just a click away. We’ve become so used to being interrupted hundreds of times a day we call it normal.
Research shows chronic distraction, an inability to focus — and the exhaustion that often goes with it — are strongly linked to burnout, anxiety and sleep problems.
