Why is My Attention Span 1.3 Seconds?
About once a day, somebody in my apartment (usually me) loses a phone. We always start out calm—recruiting our roommates to look through couch cushions, under furniture and even in the freezer (surprisingly, it’s in there a lot of the time.) As minutes pass, though, we become increasingly filled with anxiety. I’m not a big crier, but soon the tears make an appearance. Losing a phone feels like losing an extension of myself, and in a lot of ways, it is exactly that.
Our entire lives are documented in our phones—from photos to banking apps. And if you really want a reason to cry, check your screen time. I just looked—in the past week I’ve spent 11 hours on TikTok. In other words, in the past week I spent 11 hours watching other people live their lives instead of living my own.
I’ll go ahead and say it—I’m absolutely addicted to my phone, and so is nearly every millennial and member of Gen Z I know. If you were born in the 90s or early 2000s, you grew up with technology. Sure, we weren’t iPad babies, but as soon as a new technology was released, we were the first to adopt it. While our parents learned to write in cursive in elementary school, we skipped straight to lessons in the computer lab. No need to learn to write in a digital world. And I couldn’t tell you the last time I picked up a physical book. All my college textbooks were online. After all, in this hyper-busy world, why would I read, especially when Audible exists?
What’s the consequence of all this? Well, for me, a shockingly short attention span. If I had to guess, unless I am actively trying, my attention span is under three minutes. Which, not coincidentally, is the length of the longest option on TikTok. The sad thing is, for someone born in the year 2000, that’s pretty good. The average member of Gen Z loses active attention for ads in just 1.3 seconds, according to Insider Intelligence.
I vividly remember being a small child and reading (real) books for hours under my dining room table. The summer of fourth grade, I plowed through the entire Harry Potter series in under three weeks. If I had my American Girl dolls and my backyard, I was good to go. I’m not sure when that all changed, but I know exactly why it did.
The idea of quitting TikTok fills me with dread. Which is exactly why I know that I need to do it. The fact that we’re addicted to our phones isn’t necessarily our faults—it’s hard not to be in a society that revolves around tech. But I know spending 11 hours a week on TikTok is 11 hours a week that I could be spending living my life.
So, for the next week, I’m going to *try* to quit TikTok and fill all those hours with something more meaningful. Maybe I will go on more walks or spend more time with friends. Maybe my attention span will finally make it past the three-minute mark. Or maybe, just for old time’s sake, I’ll actually read a real book again.