Gloria Mark, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, has been focused on human attention research for more than 20 years. She practically inaugurated the discipline, because no one had bothered to look at what was happening with our concentration before the internet. She now summarizes her research in the book Capacity of attention. A new way to restore balance, happiness and productivity.
There are plenty of interesting details in the play, but Chicago-born Mark draws some big conclusions. For example, that although the big technology companies take advantage of our lack of control with attention to monetize it, the digital age has no turning back. Also, we shouldn’t be mortified if we use our phones to relax our heads with TikTok or a game, because it can help us focus again. And three, we have to watch what we do with our attention now, but we are only at the beginning of a new era.
Although we should not despair because of our lack of attention today, we must also know that being concentrated for a long time is essential: the balance between productivity and well-being must be the objective. In this chat with EL PAÍS by videoconference from southern California, the also researcher of Microsoft Research explains some of the keys of his book.
Ask. Is getting distracted our fault?
Answer. It is not only our fault, there are other influences that we cannot ignore. We shouldn’t feel terribly guilty if we can’t pay attention: there are many other forces competing for it.
Q. Have there always been so many interruptions?
R. We don’t know because no one has studied it. Sure, the internet has brought a lot of new disruptions. But I’m a scientist and I can’t say what life was like before the internet, even though I lived through that time. People were distracted by other things, calls, other people, there have always been distractions.
Q. But now it is different.
R. Of course it is. There are so many forces that drive us to sit in front of our computers and phones. And once we’re there, it’s like being in front of the biggest candy store in the world. It’s hard to control us. A thought crosses your mind and in milliseconds you can search for it, and we get used to it. We know we can do it and of course we do it, which reinforces the fact that, ‘oh, I have this impulse, I want to know for example what is happening in Israel.’ And I can look it up.
We also have free will, so with some effort we can avoid or turn off notifications.
Q. The origin of the Internet is based on the associations of ideas that our mind makes naturally.
R. The Internet was designed to distract us. Not on purpose, but it was designed to mimic our minds and that’s why it’s so distracting.
Q. There is no way back.
R. No, that ship has already sailed. We live in a technological world. There is no way to isolate ourselves.
Q. The notifications we receive non-stop are an inevitable part of that world.
R. Even if they do happen, I must make it clear that I am against monetizing our attention and against the idea that the digital footprints we leave on the web are used against us.
Q. But notifications are always imposed on us.
R. If that were the only thing or even the main thing, it would mean that humans do not have free will. We’d be pawns, like living in a slot machine pinball and bounce from one algorithm to another, from one ad to another. I don’t think humans work like that. We also have agency and free will, so with some effort we can avoid or turn off notifications.
Q. But we often look at notifications without being aware.
R. Yes, for automatic attention. This idea of checking it because we get rewards, like checking email, probably developed out of habit. So looking at them is free will or not? When we just react without thinking, it is not our free will. It’s the unconscious part of us that takes over. But if we were to take a step back and become aware of what we are doing, they are unconscious actions. We have to bring them to our conscience and then we can do something and exercise free will.
People were worried about the printing press, about television, when the internet started and now about ChatGPT
Q. People fear terrible consequences from that unconscious part.
R. Maybe because I’ve been a part of the internet since it started and I’ve seen all its progression and I’ve heard people complain, express fears about the internet from the beginning, I don’t worry as much. I’m an optimist because I always see people make course corrections. People were worried about printing, about television, when the internet started and now people are worried about ChatGPT.
Q. Your idea that we have an attention reservoir that empties is interesting.
R. We have a limited attention time. That’s the metaphor I use: this limited time is a deposit. There are things we do that exhaust us: vary the focus of our attention with multitasking is one of them, another is long periods of sustained focus. I was recently searching the internet to give a talk on this point. I found all these narratives out there about ‘how can we teach you to focus for 10 hours’, ‘we can teach you to have uninterrupted concentration’, ‘a book that teaches you to focus all day’. None of that is humanly possible, it’s just that we can’t do that. There’s some new research in neuroscience showing that there’s a physical basis why we can’t focus for long periods of time: There’s a neurotransmitter called glutamate that builds up in our brains and sends us a signal that says you’re exhausted. We don’t always hear that signal, but we do have real and genuine cognitive fatigue. And it can be measured through resonances. So we can’t do 10 hours of uninterrupted concentration, not even five.
Q. And Candy Crush and similar games are a way to refill that tank?
R. It is a way to recover. Because? Because it makes people happy, it calms us down. So it’s okay to use it, but you have to be strategic. If you are a person who can end up playing for hours, you should organize so that you are only playing for 5 or 10 minutes. Set a timer, use a hook to get you out [juega por ejemplo diez minutos antes de una reunión, que te obliga a dejarlo]arrange your environment in such a way that you don’t get stuck in that pit.
Set a timer, use a grappling hook to get you out, arrange your environment in such a way that you don’t get stuck in that pit
Q. How do you handle your interruptions?
R. You have to develop a new habit. I have this game of anagrams that I love. But I only play it when I’m waiting for the tea to boil. It is very, very little. It’s a good term for me. It’s a habit I developed. Each person must come up with their own.
Q. But ultimately we should not despair if we use these interruptions to relax.
R. A person can be much calmer with what he does. But if you’re a person who has a tendency to get stuck in pits and then you feel guilty and you don’t feel positive, you have to limit yourself. I’ve talked to so many people who say they feel terrible because they spent so much time online or playing a game. Where did the time go? If you are such a person, you will not be able to afford unlimited time on social networks.
Q. What do we know about boredom?
R. What we know about boredom is pretty consistent: it leads to a negative mood, we’re not happy when we’re bored. Is yoga boring? No, probably not, because people are interested in yoga. Is meditation boredom? I would say no because your mind is doing something while you are meditating. One must examine oneself to try to be aware of what to do and then stop if it does not add value and is not interesting.
Q. Their research has found that we are on each screen for 40 seconds before switching.
R. That’s the average time a person spends on any screen before switching. Everything is measured. Thus, people are less than a minute on TikTok, then on email and then on Instagram. It is an average. The median of the observations we made was 40 seconds, and the midpoint means that half of all our observations were less than 40 seconds. I guess we don’t realize how fast we change screens.
Our attention is 40 seconds on average on each screen before changing. And for all ages it is the same
Q. It is curious that in all ages it is the same.
R. We have not found differences by age, although we have not measured very old people. Most of the people we have measured are people in knowledge jobs and many are between the ages of 25 and 55.
Q. And what will it be like for people who work without a computer?
R. We haven’t looked at professions where people move a lot, like doctors or businesses. My intuition would be that a person who, for example, works in a store will have a shorter attention span because he mainly uses his mobile phone and adapts while waiting for customers.
Q. And we are only at the beginning.
R. The digital age is very young from a historical perspective. The Internet did not become widely used until the mid-1990s. In other parts of the world, it was much later. It’s only been about 25 years since we’ve had the World Wide Web. I often do this exercise: what will it be like in 50 years? It will be very, very different, much more integrated into our environment. There was a computer scientist named Mark Weiser who talked about a vision called ubiquitous computing. We are starting to see it. Phones are the first step, but we still have an object that we use to access the internet; Imagine when it is integrated into the walls of the house. You’re in a mall and there could be screens everywhere or maybe no screens, much more ubiquitous. Artificial intelligence is a new frontier, we are in the Wild West. But there’s another reason for my Wild West comment: they didn’t follow the laws, it was pretty crazy. Today we don’t have regulations either. We don’t understand how to integrate computers into our lives without exhausting ourselves. Design teams aren’t sophisticated enough to figure out how to design computers so that people can use them without stress.
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