In an era governed by the convenience of technology and short-term dopamine rushes from TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, committing to activities that require prolonged attention has become increasingly difficult. Many of us constantly find ourselves diving into the chasms of the internet for extensive hours, watching brain rot videos that consequently fuel our growing addiction to the world wide web. I, myself, am guilty of that.
Every time I lock myself in a study room, swearing that I will finish my work by 9 p.m., I sometimes can’t help but pick up my phone to watch cat and cooking videos on the internet until three hours have passed and I still haven’t done my work. I always finish my work by the end of the day, just much later than what I had planned. With our bounded attachments to dopamine spikes driven by technology, however, numerous studies have shown that our attention spans are increasingly under threat and declining at an alarming rate.
There was a study conducted by Dr. Gloria Mark, a Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, and her team. This study noted that in most recent years, attention spans have plummeted to an average of about 47 seconds on the screen before switching to a different site, with a median time of fewer than 40 seconds.
She compares this data to empirical research conducted in 2004, where people’s attention spans reached two and a half minutes on any screen before switching. People’s attention spans have ultimately been impacted in the digital age due to the type of short-form content given to us, which we presently refer to as “brain rot” videos.
Our growing addiction to technology, however, is not the sole factor responsible for our shrinking attention spans. The Atlantic’s article, “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Book,” has stirred widespread discussion due to its weighty claims. Students from elite colleges like Georgetown University and Columbia University are perplexed by the thought of reading multiple books in a semester. They noted that high school students are reading fewer and fewer books, with some never even being required to read one.
Furthermore, teachers are merely assigning news articles, poetry and excerpts. The current middle and high school curricula are flagrantly preventing students from learning and reading books cover to cover. As a result, they enter college without knowing how to fully read books or engage in elaborate discussions since they have never been used to focusing their attention on dense readings that allow them to hone their attention spans.
With the ongoing banning of books worldwide, our already declining attention span is only set to worsen to a harmful degree. In the United States alone, PEN America recorded an unprecedented scale of book bans reaching 16,000 since 2021, which they refer to as “a number not seen since the Red Scare McCarthy era of the 1950s.”
Countless books are continuously being banned around the world for their political views, LGBTQ+ themes, sexual content, depictions of racism and numerous others seen as divisive. These book bans ultimately threaten our declining attention spans as we become more compelled to rely on our screens and technology for leisure and entertainment as well as information and news, manifesting in 60-second brain rot videos with Minecraft parkour adventures.
With the increasing amount of censorship and distractions making us bow down to our technologies and plunging our ability to read books all the way through, it’s time to step away and reconnect with our society — look up and “touch some grass”.
There is so much world around us as opposed to the brain rot videos we constantly feed ourselves. We shouldn’t allow these systems of domination to capitalize on our attention, dissociating us from reality. Let us reclaim our attention and focus on what truly matters.
Read books, be curious, ask questions and hone your attention. No matter how difficult it is in the age of digital capitalism and despotism, these are more important now than ever. I, for one, don’t want to live in a world full of screen-heads where the human attention span is even more limited than that of goldfish, and I believe you wouldn’t either.
