Attention deficit

If you remember the pleasure of reading for hours on end without interruption, you are probably old enough to not have grown up with mobile phones. Today, reaching a flow state of absorbed concentration can feel impossible.

According to a 2022 survey by King’s College London, 50 per cent of responders said that, despite their best efforts, they sometimes can’t stop checking their smartphones when they should be focusing on other things, with this proving a struggle for middle-aged people as well as the young.

Meanwhile people were more likely than not to feel their attention span is shorter than it used to be (49 per cent vs 23 per cent).

While there is a lack of long-term studies that show that our attention spans have actually declined, there is clearly a public perception that our ability to concentrate has worsened.

Dopamine is a crucial chemical for concentration. Ritalin, a drug often used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) works by increasing the levels of dopamine that binds to the receptors and increases the flow of communication between these cells.

While there is no evidence that modern life is causing ADHD – the rise in cases is likely to be the result of better diagnostics – research has shown technology can interfere with our ability to concentrate; for example, switching our attention between social media, smartphones, tablets as well as TV, radio, or other media harms our ability to complete simple tasks.

Even university faculties aren’t immune. “As a professor and faculty,” says Lembke, “we have to get up and do a song and dance and hope that we are interesting enough that our students aren’t looking at their phones every 30 seconds, but rather only every five minutes.

“We’re competing with these digital drugs and it’s clearly a losing battle.”

The impact on our mental health, from extended use of social media in particular, says Lembke, is that we enter a dopamine deficit as our brain tries to compensate for all the dopamine released.

“What’s happening is our brains are down-regulating our own dopamine production and transmissions. So it’s really putting us into a state of depression in order to adjust and compensate for a world of pleasure.”