If you’re just a few words into this story, but already feeling the urge to click or swipe or begin some other activity altogether, I won’t take it personally. Attention spans among humans have reduced dramatically in the past several years.
Several school districts around the country are trying to reclaim that by instituting bans on cell phones in classrooms—and some of those programs are bearing fruit.
Two years after phones were banned in an unnamed large urban Florida school district, test scores were up significantly, in part because students were better able to focus on the work in front of them. And a recent survey of Ohio public schools found 68% of principals saying students can now stay on one task for more than 20 minutes without seeking a quick digital break.
It’s one thing to ban phones in schools, though. Putting limitations on them in the real world isn’t practical. And that means attention spans in adults continue to lag.
Squirrel!
Researcher Gloria Mark, who studies human attention at the University of California, Irvine, found in 2004 that the average person focused their attention on a single screen for about two and half minutes. By 2016, that length of time had dropped to 47 seconds, a reduction of roughly 69%.
In other words, we’re all chasing shiny objects these days. And it’s a trend that’s not likely to reverse itself. It could, in fact, get even worse.
We are, after all, under assault from distractions. The lure of dopamine-feeding social media threads calls to us constantly. Email, Slack and Discord ping right as we get into a groove. TV news and shows, as well as films, feature quickly changing shots, further sapping our ability to focus. AI, meanwhile, is impacting our ability to think critically.
It’s even worse at work. Microsoft, in its 2025 Work Trend Index, found that the average office worker was interrupted every two minutes. Employees receive 92 emails per day, on average (and that doesn’t factor in your personal email), along with an average 153 Teams messages per work day. Throw in meetings and your circadian rhythm, which regulates your natural peak focus times, and we’re all in trouble.
We’re not doomed, though, says Mark. In her book Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity, she reframes myths around attention, pointing out that just as you couldn’t keep up a physical activity indefinitely, it’s impossible for your brain to focus all the time. And some of that mental wandering isn’t bad.
“It turns out that mindless activities like playing simple games doesn’t just make us temporarily happy,” she writes. “When used strategically, those activities can also help us replenish our overspent mental resources, and enable fresh ideas to surface.”
But if you’re concerned you’re on a path to being the human equivalent of Dug, the easily distracted golden retriever from Pixar’s Up, there are tools to retrain your brain, despite the daily assaults you face on your focal abilities.
The benefits of books
First, you’ll also want to put some physical distance between you and your phone. If you can’t grab it, you’ll be less likely to doomscroll and distract your brain.
The best method, though, is to read more. Neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf argues that the physical process of reading changes our brain. It matters what and where you read, though. Most reading on screens is “skimming to inform”—looking for key words that give you a loose idea of what’s being said. That’s not likely to help. You’ll need to slow down and actually read what was written—and that’s easier with a physical book.
“When we skim, we literally, physiologically, don’t have time to think. Or feel,” she writes. “The difference between skimming and reading with all our intelligence is the difference between fully activated reading brains and their short-circuited, screen-dulled versions.”
Reading a printed publication is a slower process that requires more attention. Our brains associate screens with distraction, which triggers our brain to skim. We think we read “faster” on screens, but the truth is, we’re just reading less, even if we don’t realize it.
In July 2020, less than half of Americans read one book over a 12-month period, according to a Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. And a 2025 study by the University of Florida found the number of people who partook of pleasure reading was down 40% over two decades.
“This is not just a small dip—it’s a sustained, steady decline of about 3% per year,” said Jill Sonke, director of research initiatives at the University of Florida’s Center for Arts in Medicine in a statement. “It’s significant, and it’s deeply concerning.”