People’s attention spans are getting worse constantly. I see it in everything, with screentime hours commonly reaching double digits, people struggling to get through a conversation without checking their phone, and the steadfast refusal for some to carry out an assignment without the use of ChatGPT. This issue seems more prominent with each new generation – I see kids lose interest before a physical game is finished because the reward doesn’t come fast enough. With the way our world is progressing, it is training us to expect everything instantly, and the moment we have to deal with slow Wi-Fi, process a piece of text longer than five pages, or go somewhere without access to 4G we lose our minds. If we don’t want this problem to progress, we have to slow down.
Our environment looks very different than it used to. I still remember growing up without a phone in my pocket or access to a screen outside the living room, but it seems my generation will be the last to do so. Now, not only have screens been made more easily accessible, they have become necessary. You can’t do your schoolwork or apply for a job without one – everything is submitted online. This has created a reality where you can hardly go without technology even if you wanted to. And the thing is, if you are surrounded by technology all the time, it can become so normalised that you don’t even realise how much time you are spending looking at screens. They become even more enticing as they are updated at an ever-accelerating rate. Amongst all these updates we see a common trend: everything is getting quicker. This may sound like a good thing, after all, why wouldn’t we want to be able to do things faster? My issue is that increasingly people are becoming unable to handle any other way. The rise of TikTok led to every social media site altering their platform in an attempt to keep up (see Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, Snapchat spotlight…) This has led to the domination of short-form content, and now I have friends who can’t sit through a movie without also looking at their phone to give their brain a speedier source of entertainment. I’ve seen people online say that they won’t read a book anymore, as they ‘got the gist from SparkNotes’. Then there are those who have a genuine inability to complete any type of work without help from AI. They use AI for anything they don’t want to read, or write, or think about. Technology is on the up, and critical thought is on the down.
While these frankly astonishing behaviours may seem like they come from a small minority of people, the more you look for it the more you see hints of this mindset in everyone around you. And I’m not excluding myself from this! I couldn’t begin to count how many days I have lost to the pit of social media, and the toll this was taking on my mental health with detrimental. The more your brain gets used to this monochrome state, the harder it is to claw your way out of it. We have trained our brains to want everything in our lives to happen so quickly, that this is the only way they know how to receive gratification. Most of us rarely have to wait for anything, and so when a time comes where a goal takes real time and effort, we struggle. As technology continues to develop there will be more and more ways to avoid putting effort into anything, but this surely will do damage to our ability to develop as people. Additionally, finding ourselves unable to take on challenging tasks will impact not only our academic and professional ability, but our mental wellbeing too. To combat this impending issue, I cannot emphasise enough the importance of learning to be bored again.
By teaching yourself to cope with boredom, the boring tasks in life no longer feel insurmountable. Spending time doing something you don’t necessarily enjoy, or even doing nothing, without constant sensory input, will lengthen your attention span and strengthen your ability to take on new things. Challenging your brain is crucial to mental growth, and simply to having a fulfilling life. Starting this journey may seem daunting if you are as entrenched in technology as I have been previously. So, how can you go about this? I deleted TikTok some time ago, and I find not having access to this type of content incredibly beneficial, but going cold turkey doesn’t work for everyone. You might start by taking breaks from TikTok and using this time to be aware of your body, process your environment, listen to the sounds around you. Importantly, don’t take every opportunity to open an app in the first place. I have started eating breakfast by my window, and the boost I get from ten minutes sitting in the sun, getting fresh air, and watching people outside instead of on my phone is profound. As the day goes on, I take the time to think over certain automatic decisions. When I pick up my phone with no particular purpose in mind, I force myself to switch course. I stop myself from putting my earphones in for the five-minute walk to the corner shop. Building these habits, and the thought process to encourage them, is vital.
You may be thinking that this all sounds annoying and dull, but that’s the point. We were not built to be stimulated all of the time. Being bored is a critical part of the human experience. This is something we must remember if we want to preserve our ability to do difficult things and be better for it. So, take opportunities to be bored. Stop watching YouTube while making dinner. Take a shower without listening to music. Spend time outside, and stay there past the point of boredom. See the difference it makes.