Then, technologies like the telegraph, radio, and television sped up the spread of information. In the nineteenth century, for example, news could take days to travel from place to place. It’s difficult to pinpoint precisely, but a good jumping-off point is what think-tank director Robert Colvile calls “The Great Acceleration.” Essentially, the way we receive information is speeding up. But, if we accept the premise that our concentration is suffering, the next question is: Why? And measuring these metrics isn’t a definitive way to map our evolving attention spans.
Lehmann’s study is indicative rather than comprehensive, of course. With every passing decade, trending topics appear and fade with increasing speed. And he found that this phenomenon actually predates the internet. See, Lehmann also analyzed every book that’s been uploaded to Google Books between the 1880s and today. It’s not quite as simple as ones and zeros. So, is it really just the internet that’s eroding our focus? In short, the more time we’ve spent in online spaces, the shorter our attention spans have become. The study records similar results across platforms like Google and Reddit as well. That’s a six-hour decrease in only three years. By 2016, that number had dwindled to 11.6 hours. Instead, he spearheaded a study to find out if there was actually evidence to back up his suspicion.īy analyzing various metrics across online platforms, he and his team discovered something interesting: In 2013, conversation topics trended on Twitter for an average of 17.5 hours before people lost interest and moved on to a new topic.
Lehmann is a professor at Denmark’s Technical University – so he didn’t simply dismiss the nagging feeling that his concentration was waning. His capacity for deep focus was dwindling, and he was more susceptible to distractions than ever before. In 2016, Sune Lehmann was having these exact problems. You’re busy all the time, yet you struggle to actually get anything done. Unless you’re living off the grid, you’ve probably noticed that it’s getting increasingly difficult to focus.
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