I remember a time when I used to remember everything; all zip-codes, phone-numbers and birthdays of my family and friends had a place of their own, permanently stationed inside my mind.
Image by Brian Solis - source: Flickr
Or at least I thought it was permanent, but then came the digital age; now all this information is stored on my mobile phone with a backup on my network drive at home, and as a consequence most of it isn't stored in my mind anymore. Information in general, not just addresses and phone-numbers, is at our fingertips; what we need, we look up on some database or another, online or offline.
Not only that; we look it up while catching up on the news and checking what the favorite sports-club has done lately. Several studies have shown that the digital age has strongly improved our ability to multi-task. But they also show that our attention spans have suffered greatly. Not only information, but constant distraction is at our fingertips and we get bored of anything that doesn't gratify some some urge within a few seconds. Because I noticed the negative effects myself when I realized I stopped memorizing stuff, I looked up some information about human attention spans and I must say it's even worse than I thought...
The average human attention span has shrunk by almost a quarter in just 15 years, between 2000 and 2015: from 12 seconds to 8.25 seconds, to be more exact. Now, I don't know how they measure the attention span of a goldfish, but these little aquatic pets have attention spans of 9 seconds on average, beating us humans by three quarters of a second!! Take a look at this infographic for this, and some more rather shocking facts about how our always-online-lifestyles influence our mental abilities.
On Psychology Today, I found this attention span test, right here; try it out. I had, to my surprise, a fairly good score of 76 out of 100. Maybe it isn't too surprising though; for almost a year now I've had the discipline to write and publish an article every day, and I guess that proves I can at least concentrate on one task for anything between 30 minutes and 2 hours; words don't flow as easily some days ;-) And maybe I'm lucky to have known a long time without the internet.
I have no idea how this development will pan out in our future, but I do believe we should try to catch up with the goldfish at least. During a lecture, a book, or a movie, when we miss only a few seconds, we might have missed essential information. In the movie and the book we can go back (do you catch yourself re-reading and re-watching a lot?), but not during conversations or lectures. This is surely something to be concerned about I think...
Digital Hygiene: How We Might've Fucked Our Attention Spans
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