May I have your attention, please? I'll try and be quick, as I probably only have about 47 seconds before your mind starts wandering. That, according to psychologist Dr Gloria Mark, from the University of California, Irvine, is now our average attention span, based on her latest study of people's use of screens in the workplace.
When her team conducted a similar study back in 2004 (before anyone had a smartphone and there was no such thing as TikTok) we could focus for two and a half minutes before wanting to switch to something new.
Of course, these figures have their limits. Your declining concentration when grinding out a report may not mean your overall focus levels are collapsing.
After all, if you were sent a long message about some juicy gossip, you'd likely be able to give this your full focus for the required time.
As other psychologists have argued, your concentration can vary so much, that the very idea of an 'average' attention span is almost meaningless.
Because of this, there isn't even a scientific consensus on how to measure focus.
Nevertheless, it's likely you feel like yours is dwindling. As one recent survey from the Centre for Attention Studies at King's College London suggests, nearly half the population now feel as if theirs is worse than it was. With the ever-present pull of our emails (we check them 77 times a day, according to Mark's research) and social media (up to 237 times a day for some), it's easy to see why.
Of course, we can silence notifications, put on noise-cancelling headphones and work with applications that take up the full screen (tab clutter causes a significant drop in productivity, according to one 2021 study). Even when we've done all that, however, there's still the enemy within to contend with.
This story is from the April 2024 edition of BBC Science Focus.
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This story is from the April 2024 edition of BBC Science Focus.
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