Your attention span now less than goldfish’s

People now have shorter attention spans than goldfish — and our always-on portable devices may be to blame, a new study suggests.

The study from Microsoft Corp. draws on surveys of more than 2,000 Canadians who played games online in order to determine the impact that pocket-sized devices and the increased availability of digital media and information are having on everyday life. Researchers also used electroencephalograms (EEGs) to monitor brain activity of 112 people.

Among the findings of the 54page study was that, thanks to our desire to always be connected, people can multi-task like never before. However, our attention spans have fallen from an average of 12 seconds in the year 2000 to just eight seconds today. A goldfish is believed to have a nine-second attention span on average, the study says.

“Canadians with more digital lifestyles (those who consume more media, are multi-screeners, social media enthusiasts, or earlier adopters of technology) struggle to focus in environments where prolonged attention is needed,” reads the study.

“While digital lifestyles decrease sustained attention overall, it’s only true in the long-term. Early adopters and heavy social media users front load their attention and have more intermittent bursts of high attention. They’re better at identifying what they want/don’t want to engage with and need less to process and commit things to memory.”

Microsoft’s data is supported by similar findings released by the National Centre for Biotechnology Information and the National Library of Medicine in the U.S.

Among the most concerning findings of the study is our declining ability to sustain our focus during repetitive activities: 44 per cent of respondents said they had to concentrate really hard to stay focused on tasks, while 37 per cent said they were unable to make the best use of their time, forcing them to work late evenings and or weekends.

The study further found evidence to suggest that people are increasingly displaying “addiction-like behaviours” when it comes to their devices:

77 per cent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 24 reported they reach for their phone or mobile device when they feel bored;

52 per cent check their phone every 30 minutes or less; and

79 per cent reported using their portable devices while watching television.

Bruce Morton, a researcher with the University of Western Ontario’s Brain & Mind Institute, said it’s actually a natural reaction that the human brain is having.

The brain is remarkable when it comes to collecting information and processing it, Morton said. The more you feed it, the hungrier it gets. Technology is now feeding it an ever-expanding diet.

“When we first invented the car, it was so novel. The thought of having an entertainment device in the car was ridiculous because the car itself was the entertainment,” he said.

“After a while, travelling for eight hours at a time, you’d had enough of it. The brain is bored. You put radios in the car and video displays. Why? Because after the first 10 minutes of the drive I’ve had enough already. I understand this.”

“Just because we may be allocating our attention differently as a function of the technologies we may be using, it doesn’t mean that the way our attention actually can function has changed,” he said. “Digital technologies dovetail seamlessly into the information processing abilities of our brain.”

Alyson Gausby, consumer insights lead with Microsoft Canada, said the company conducted the research on behalf of marketing firms to help them better understand how people are using today ’s mobile technologies.

“We know that consumers’ lives are increasingly digital whether at home or at work, or anywhere in-between.

“We see now that news is reduced to 140 characters, some conversations are condensed to emojis and we wanted to understand how this affecting the way that Canadians see and interact with the world,” said Gausby. “It’s our new ‘newsfeed reality,’ as I like to put it.”

Microsoft’s study is considered accurate to within plus or minus 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.