With the rise of the internet, and easy access to information, one would have thought that being able to focus more, and sustain a good amount of attention for a while would be something we easily get. But the rise of the internet has brought about a problem which scientists now battle with all seriousness.
To understand this, we must understand what it is we are talking about.
I prefer the psychologist view of attention, as seen below;
- Attention is a concept studied in cognitive psychology that refers to how we actively process specific information in our environment.
[source](https://www.verywell.com › Living Well › Psychology › Cognitive Psychology)
How we actively process information in our surrounding, attention is simply taking it all in, assimilating, understanding, I don’t want to use the word focus, but that’s the main idea, a full attention of something is necessary to attain any measure of success in any endeavor.
Again, this is another concept that is rather different from attention alone;
Attention span is the amount of concentrated time a person can spend on a task without becoming distracted. Most educators and psychologists agree that the ability to focus and sustain attention on a task is crucial for the achievement of one's goals.
Many scientific studies have tried to state whether or not if our attention has been waning, I am of the belief that it depends.
Our attention span decreasing depends on the type of action we are performing. Tasks such as mining, construction works, require and are performed by highly skilled and trained individuals. Individuals who have been trained in terms of safety restrictions etc. In retrospect, activities like school works, research , reports and other works that typically require some sort of external research using a computer often suffer drop in productivity and attention due to the fact that distractions are simply;
The rise of the internet, the rise of youtube in particular, memecenters, social medias, have created a situation were a notification is all it takes for one to be immersed in a world retweets and cat videos.
All it takes to be immersed is to answer the notif right? Often I see kids having their youtube accounts on while doing assignments and home works, that’s like inviting the devil to the house, with easily accessable cat videos at our beck and call WE, are the ones that distract ourselves.
Most times, I would often put down the phone, turn off notifs and focus my attention on the work.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/tests/personality/attention-span-test
