Parked in a Churchtown car park and listening to the radio, I noticed, from the corner of my eye, a woman get into her car, which was parked facing the side of my car. Next thing I knew, the bonnet of the Audi was buried in my car door. Her attention excursion cost me a mild brain injury, PTSD and a soft-tissue neck injury. Plus the loss of a year’s productive living – that I will never get back. The driver just forgot she was driving a car.
One study by the University of California found that our attention span when looking at a screen has fallen from two and a half minutes in 2003 to 47 seconds in 2023. Today the printed word has been replaced by the screen. What was once a serious and coherent discussion of public affairs at the heart of our culture has been trivialised into a constellation of snappy 35-second posts.
Like a mother feeding regurgitated food to her chicks, these bite-size snippets offer little to digest or think about. Once down the rabbit hole, the unsatiated viewer hungers for another, and then another, and so on. As these moments roll into hours, you’re left with a hollow sinking feeling; a sense of having been robbed, but you can’t quite put a finger on it.
Traditionally, oil, wheat, gold, coffee, etc are commodities that are traded on global markets. Today our attention is ranked as the most valuable commodity on the planet. Elon Musk and the gang pour billions into creating algorithms that track your likes and dislikes, and plunder your precious attention – right under your nose. To boost their bulging billions, these corporate bandits are on a mission to knock you off-guard, decimate your ability to focus and steal your attention.
This morning, I overtook a wobbling cyclist on the busy road. In my rear-view mirror, I saw he had a sandwich in the hand he was trying to grip his handlebar with. Wiping his overstuffed mouth with his elbow, the lad was simultaneously glued to his screen, and scrolling with his thumb.
On our footpaths, we meet the zombies with heads dipped; chin to chest, eyes glued to hand-held devices, often wearing headphones too (might this be you?). A pedestrian could be naked, or on fire, and the zombie wouldn’t blink. In cinemas, sports events and concerts, screen junkies strain to keep abreast of the event they’ve come out and paid to see, while struggling to check their device.
The term nomophobia was coined to describe the irrational fear of being without a mobile phone. Smartphone users can experience anxiety or panic when unable to access their device. Recently, I heard one woman confess on radio that she even brings her (waterproof) device into the shower with her. When asked why, sounding dismayed, she said “in case I might miss something”.
Swamped by information overload, continuous scrolling and hours spent gaming, our brains are being wired to restlessly skim and switch
As with anyone addicted to something – gambling, heroin, porn, alcohol, etc – the phone junkie craves the dopamine hit. The mood-altering drug delivered by endless skimming and checking is triggered by the mindless, repetitive cycle.
Addicted to his own merchandise, Musk shoots off a minimum of 70 chest-thumping posts on X every day. We have free will to think and process our own thoughts, but we are in grave danger of being dumbed down into societies of passive nincompoops.
A study has identified that night-time smartphone use is directly associated with shorter sleep and increased psychological distress. Phone use at night-time, when children are alone and unprotected, is just one of the reasons for cyberbullying. You wouldn’t send your child out on the M50 to play, so how does it seem appropriate to hand anyone under the age of 16 a smartphone?
No one can claim that life is an easy ride, and thoughts can be uncomfortable at times. To cope with the boredom, isolation and the fear visited on us by Covid, we turned to our devices in our droves in search of some relief. With this handy, instant distraction, every click offered a fleeting moment of “relief” (dopamine hit) from our thoughts, and fears.
[ Parents, if you’re going to ban anything, ban devices from bedroomsOpens in new window ]
As far back as 3000 BC, advertising existed in the form of papyrus posters. Today, we have newspaper, TV and radio adverts designed to win our attention. You make a conscious decision to pick up your Irish Times, or turn on or off the radio, or the TV. You get to choose what you want to absorb or ignore.
Information consumes attention. It‘s every media editor’s job to catch yours. They understand how, when and where to deliver the loudest headline, the most outrageous or grating comment or spectacular photo to reel you in – momentarily. Then, it‘s up to you to choose to continue to watch what‘s on offer in return. This exchange is completely transactional. The result can assist in the formation of opinions and decision-making and, ultimately, can support our democracy.
In contrast, the algorithm has no truck with fluffy benefits to mankind, nor the greater good. Instead, it shamelessly seeks to pave the way for our free will to be plundered. By saturating the world with catchy visuals and sounds, masked as “entertainment” or “educational content”, they’ve made us sitting ducks. Even “innocent” retail platforms exist in part to harvest your attention. What they actually sell is secondary to the big steal itself.
To make the world go around, people need to make a buck. But there must be some accountability as to where this buck must be made to stop. As I stood by a supermarket food cabinet last week, the sight of an under-two-year-old child in its buggy, utterly hypnotised by an irresistible colourful screen, struck me as tragic.
Early on in the game, possessed of a compulsive dependence on it, Donald Trump copped the value of external attention. Even as he was shot, knowing the value of “good television”, instinctively, he shot that tight fist of his up in defiance; and scored the nation’s attention. He‘s simply brilliant at grabbing it. By spewing troughs of what is mostly unchallenged guff, he won 49.8 per cent of a highly “entertained” US electorate‘s attention. How many of these voters are laughing today?
Our attention lies at the very core of our humanity. Swamped by information overload, continuous scrolling and hours spent gaming, our brains are being wired to restlessly skim and switch. This loss of calm, and reduced ability to focus, raises stress levels and increases mental fatigue. With shrinking attention spans, how are children supposed to develop intellectually, and progress towards, let alone absorb, third-level education? The potential impact of device/gaming addiction on their exam results can only be catastrophic.
Neurology consultant Arif Shukralla, at the Beacon Hospital in Dublin, warns that “it‘s highly important that children learn their mathematics well. If they don’t learn basic problem-solving skills as children,” life will be very difficult for them, he predicts. “Because they have higher emotional intelligence, girls are at a slightly lesser risk here than boys, although girls face other serious social media challenges.”
According to Shukralla, “The problem with social media and gaming, these apps are distracting and give instant gratification. Puzzles, reels and memes don’t stimulate the important logical, deductible way of thinking.” He emphasises: “by not exercising the deductive way of thinking, reasoning and analysing, this puts them at serious risk of never developing their automatic skills. This in turn puts them at risk of long-term dementias.”
Talking on the phone is now completely foreign to young people, who prefer messaging their friends. This limited form of communication automatically lacks the multilayered complexity within the intonation of the human voice. Zoom deprives participants of the natural ability to read body language and other non-verbal communication cues. Ergonomically, worsening posture from supporting lowered heads – not to mentioned overactive thumbs – and upper-thoracic back pain has reached epidemic proportions.
In Brave New World (1932) Aldous Huxley depicted a future in which universal happiness is only achieved by thoroughly dehumanising humanity. His fear was that we might one day be flooded with information. Way ahead of his time, Huxley worried that the undoing of people‘s capacity to think would deprive them of their autonomy and maturity and history; rendering them vulnerable to manipulation.
One modern book I’ve found useful is US TV host and journalist Chris Hayes’s recently published The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource. Hayes shreds the veil that conceals the billionaires’ rampage to steal our compromised supply of attention. In an engaging, informative style, he warns of the dire consequences that await if we don’t stop the onslaught and take back control of our free will – while we still can.
Hayes says: “Now our deepest neurological structures, human evolutionary inheritances and social impulses are in a habitat designed to prey upon, to cultivate, distort, or destroy that which most fundamentally makes us human.”
Going straight for the jugular, it‘s Hayes’s mission to put a halt to this creeping evil that is attention-harvesting.
Nuala Macklin is a journalist and documentary maker
