You might joke that you suffer from “mild ADD,” but at least you’ve been able to rest easy knowing your attention span is longer than a goldfish. Well, think again. Goldfish have a notoriously low attention span of just nine seconds, but according to a new study, us humans now have an even lesser ability to focus. Yikes.
The study, conducted by Microsoft, analyzed 2,000 people, and found that since the year 2000 (right around when mobile phones became ubiquitous) the average attention span dropped from 12 seconds to eight seconds.
“Heavy multi-screeners find it difficult to filter out irrelevant stimuli—they’re more easily distracted by multiple streams of media,” the report reads. The one positive here is that while our attention span is dropping rapidly, our ability to multitask is on the rise–again, likely a byproduct of the tech revolution.
No surprise, there are also big generational differences at play: A whopping 77 percent of people aged 18 to 24 responded “yes” when asked “When nothing is occupying my attention, the first thing I do is reach for my phone,” compared with only 10 percent of those over the age of 65.
There you have it. Now, go ahead and pat yourself on the back for making it to the end of this story.
