Attention please!

The average attention span of a goldfish is nine seconds. Researchers at Microsoft have found that for humans this has dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds due to our digitized lifestyle!

The researchers in Canada surveyed 2,000 participants and studied the brain activity of 112 others. They discovered that since the revolution of mobile telephony (from about the year 2000) our average time during which we can focus our attention undivided on a task has decreased from 12 seconds to 8 seconds.

“People with a decidedly digital lifestyle have a hard time in an environment that requires long-term attention. It is difficult for them to filter out irrelevant stimuli – they are more easily distracted by different media outlets, ”says the report.

However, according to Microsoft researchers, this should not be seen as a setback of our human mind. It indicates that the human ability to “multi-task” has simply improved. Multi-tasking is the rapid switching between simple tasks by the brain, so we can deal better and better with an over-activated brain. Our brains adapt to the possibilities of new technologies.

It should be noted here that other scientific research has shown that multi-taskers have less control over their working memory and are distracted by almost everything in daily life. This takes a lot of energy!

The question is also, do we maintain our ability to focus longer when necessary? Some scientists fear the negative influence of the internet and continuous connectivity on our brains. The volatile and irregular reading style that people use online makes it more difficult for us to focus on a normal book for a long time. The ability to think deeply and process complex information is closely related to this type of long-term attention.

Another reason to limit your endless connectivity regularly, as you could read in one of our other blogs.

Bravo, you have been able to concentrate for more than 8 seconds to read this article, there is still hope 🙂