A 2018 Gallup study found that as students get older, they become less engaged, or “involved, enthusiastic, and committed.” The study contained some alarming findings: In fifth grade, most students (74 percent) reported high levels of engagement with school. However, by middle school, only half of students are engaged in their learning, and by high school the number of engaged students shrinks to about one-third.
English teacher Kristin Moore has noticed an attention span issue among the students in the classes she teaches, who typically are in the age range of 16-18 . Having been teaching for 16 years, she has found that across her years in education, students have had a decreased attention span over the past five to six years. Moore believes the COVID-19 pandemic to be a factor, although she had seen issues start to arise slightly before the pandemic.
“I think during COVID, it got worse,” Moore said. “I think it’s because students were on their phones all of the time…phones have just become a part of everyone’s everyday life.”
TikTok, Instagram reels and YouTube shorts normalized short-form videos that made people used to quickly diverting between topics as they scroll, becoming accustomed to scrolling past the topics they don’t find completely interesting. It wired people’s brains to work better when switching between different tasks, which Moore has seen, noting that people in her classes struggle with reading longer texts.
“If students are given an activity that they find to be ‘boring’, they are not willing to engage in it,” Moore said. “They often give up very quickly”
Moore finds that smartphones have changed student’s dopamine levels, acknowledging that instant gratification—something that immediately entertains, rewards or catches one’s attention—prevents students from having the motivation to do extra work to achieve that because it is automatically given to them virtually.
“We’re never really having to struggle with something hard for too long,” Moore said. “We’re immediately getting hits of like, ‘oh, that’s interesting.’”
Similarly to Moore, senior Akshaya Ganesh believes in this idea of quick dopamine hits for any sort of entertainment whether it comes to scrolling on social media or other types of short-form content. Having only been introduced to the world of social media recently due to parental restrictions in the past, she thinks that her attention span allows her to process longer-form content better than those constantly exposed to shorter content.
“[For people], sitting down and putting effort into things has become a lot harder,” Ganesh said. “People are so used to getting quick rewards from social media.”
According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, 43% of Gen Alpha kids have a tablet before age six and 58% have a smartphone before age ten. Ganesh thinks that younger generations tend to have a lower attention span because an already hyperactive mind being exposed to short-form content causes a further decline in focus.
“It’s just going to get worse for later generations,” Ganesh said.
Ganesh herself has noticed that since she received a phone in the eighth grade, she has found it harder to sit through a class as a result of technology becoming more prevalent in her life.
“I used to read a lot,” Ganesh said. “But then I got my phone, and so that’s how the ten hours per week [of screen time] came to be.”
Typically in Moore’s AP Literature class, her students read “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte, which was published in 1840 and has more difficult language than a modern book and is longer in length. Moore decided not to teach the book this school year because she didn’t think that her students would be able to read it due to the changed attention span in students over recent years. She instead decided to teach a book that was shorter and easier to read.
“I want students to read the books and I realize not everyone does,” Moore said. “But I at least need the majority of the class to read the book in order to teach it effectively.”
Ganesh, like Moore, has noticed that recently people have been complaining about doing longer readings and references Moore’s ideology that in previous years, students were less likely to complain about that type of assignment.
Eighth grader Maximilian Calderon has had access to the internet since he was nine years old, and finds that people in younger generations struggle more with their attention span because they are largely unregulated.
Calderon spends about 50 hours per week on screens, with him spending most of his time playing various mobile games including Fortnite among others. He has noticed that while he spends a long time on these games once he starts playing, he is always conscious of his playing time, not really losing track of time while he plays.
Calderon also finds it more difficult to pay attention at home in comparison to school even though he finds it easy to pay attention when he wants to.
“I’ve built an association in my room with games,” Calderon said. “If I’m not in my room I can do hours of work.”
Moore has had a conversation with her students regarding this change in attention span because she wanted people to become more aware of this issue. She understands that some of her students might not care about it, claiming that this decline is “just the way it is,” but she at least wants to provoke conversation among her students in the hopes that they would care about what is happening to them.
“Raising awareness among students that this is something that’s happening to their brain and giving them the responsibility of saying ‘is this something I want to work on’ is the first step,” Moore said.
There are multiple ways in which a person’s mind is affected by doom scrolling. Firstly, doom scrolling increases activity in the part of the brain called the amygdala, which is responsible for processing emotions. This means that the mind is more sensitive to stress and other negative emotions. Also, “chronic stress and anxiety from doom scrolling can impair the function of the prefrontal cortex, making it harder to manage emotions and make rational decisions” according to Amit Shah’s Neurology clinic.
Moore believes that something that would help this problem is if parents would take away their kids’ phones or limit screen time. Although she views it as a difficult feat, she believes that it would help with the scrolling that occurs when students need to complete their work.
“I think using phones for furthering socialization and emotional connections is totally fine,” Moore said. “But it’s the scrolling and mobile games that have become a problem, because it’s just numbing us out to our own thoughts and experiences.”
Ganesh also thinks there are methods to combat the attention span issue.
The Pomodoro method is something that Ganesh thinks would highly benefit students as it would allow them to take breaks every 25 minutes and gives them a chance to relax and not feel bored.
Ganesh also notes that when taking a class where the teacher grants breaks or walks during class, it tends to be very helpful. Because the attention span of students has become so low, Ganesh notices a struggle to go an entire class period without some type of break, so having an opportunity to clear her mind helps significantly.
“Having walks or just making kids stand up and stretch and just take their mind off the work helps a lot,” Ganesh said.
Managing one’s time is also something that Calderon believes would help students, while he finds that it would be harder for teenagers to do so because of a lack of responsibility. He also thinks that having a workspace dedicated to studying would help students be able to focus for longer.
“Never game in your room,” Calderon said.
In order to help take charge in preventing these issues within the school environment, Moore tries to have her students turn in their phones before class starts to avoid them picking up their phones during class time, but she understands that once people are outside of class, they still spend hours on their phones.
“The important thing is that we are noticing what’s happening,” Moore said.
