July 28, 2025 • 40 mins
Thanks to the constant stream of information, endless notifications, and explosion of rapid-fire, short-form content, are we losing our capacity for sustained focus and deep concentration?
In this episode, we’re joined by Dr. Patrick Clarke, a Clinical Psychologist and Associate Professor at Curtin University.
https://staffportal.curtin.edu.au/staff/profile/view/patrick-clarke-ec8428e9/
00:00 Introduction to Attention and Digital Devices
02:48 Understanding Types of Attention
09:20 Attention Span in the Digital Age
11:00 Research Findings on Attention Over Time
13:10 The Impact of Interest on Focus
15:13 Switching Tasks and Focus
17:44 Brain Plasticity and Adaptation
21:40 Social Media and Short-Form Content
23:27 Cognitive Engagement and Anxiety Levels
24:12 The Impact of Short-Form Content
27:07 Social Media's Influence on Mental Health
30:46 Digital Interactions vs. Real-Life Relationships
32:38 Strategies for Improving Focus
38:38 Reassessing Attention Span Concerns
Let us know what else you’d like us to look into, or just say hello at https://www.ruinedbytheinternet.com/
internet, attention span, digital devices, social media, cognitive psychology, focus, mental health, attention processes, short-form content, long-form content
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Ruined by the Internet.
I'm Gareth King. Today we're asking, has the
Internet ruined our attention spans thanks to its relentless
stream of information, endless notifications, an explosion of
rapid fire, short form content? Are we losing our capacity for
sustained focus and deep concentration?
To help us get a better perspective, we're joined by
(00:20):
Doctor Patrick Clark, a clinicalpsychologist and associate
professor at Curtin University. Patrick, thank you so much for
joining us and welcome to the show.
Great pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Before we begin, can you tell usa bit about the work that you do
and the journey that led you to this area of expertise?
(00:42):
Yeah, So I guess I'm comparatively new to to this
area, although I've got quite a history and a background working
in the sort of attention space. So a lot of the work I did
through my my PhD and some of the sort of more clinically
applied work I've done in psychology has been about
understanding the way in which people allocate their attention
(01:05):
to things that might signal potential danger in the
environment or be the source of anxiety.
And how the way attention can bejust distributed amongst these
things. Or how, you know, things that
seem to just pop out of the background for some people, you
know, more, more threatening faces or all the rest of it
might shape people's emotional experiences.
And it was kind of through this and through some studies that we
(01:28):
were running with where we were doing little, little training
tasks, trying to train attentiontowards or away from different
types of content that I eventually started thinking
about, Well, if we're doing these little tasks that might
take 10 or 15 minutes and hopingto see changes in the way people
are processing information sort of around that time.
We're like, we're spending increasingly large amounts of
time on our digital devices, youknow, two to three hours a day.
(01:51):
And thinking that, you know, the, the, the feedback loops
that might be happening between humans and their devices could
be having some pretty hefty effects potentially on both, you
know, their patents of cognitionand the way they process the
world, but also, you know, theiremotional experiences as well.
And I started to get very interested in it from there and
kind of came in at, at an interesting and kind of critical
(02:13):
point, I think where people werejust starting to realise that a
lot of the measures that they were using in this research,
which was mostly relying on people estimating how much they
were using, might not be kind ofa gold standard way to be doing
it. And I guess I was sort of of a
similar mind thinking we need tobe really rigorous in how we're
sort of assessing some of these things.
And and it's sort of, yeah, escalated from there.
(02:35):
You know, I understand there's been quite a lot of research
around different types of attention, the impact over time,
But before we get into that, canyou briefly explain what the
different types of attention are?
Yeah, it's really interesting because we talk about attention
like it's a single thing, but you know, attention can you
know, more broadly be operationalized as a set of
(02:57):
processes. So you know, I guess typically
when we're thinking about attention, it's about what
maintains our focus on a single thing or a or a subset of
things. But there's a few kind of sub
processes that are involved in that.
And you know, perhaps one of themost critical ones is this
process is called inhibition or inhibitory control.
(03:17):
And you know, it's sort of relates to this other very broad
idea about, you know, we don't so much have free will as free
won't. You know, the, the process of
inhibiting all this irrelevant information that's bombarding
our senses in the environment atany given point in time is so
critical to us to actually be able to retain focus on
something. So there's this sort of, you
know, inhibition process which allows us to retain focus on
(03:41):
something for sustained periods of time.
But then there's other processeslike switching, being able to
jump between alternative bits ofinformation that might be either
in different parts of the world,but also maybe information that
might be in the same part of theworld.
I can be looking at a piece of text and I can be looking at the
colour of that text or the font of that text and different sorts
of properties. So these sorts of attentional
(04:02):
switches that might sort of happen.
And then there's sort of this, you know, higher level
processes. You've probably heard a bit
about working memory and the like that are kind of, you know,
use some of these attentional processes, but they're more
about how much information you can hold in mind and how you can
manipulate some of those processes as well.
So those are kind of the some ofthe broad basic, you know,
processes. Yeah, that that contribute to
(04:24):
our experience of attention and attention focus, I guess.
This that's interesting around the the free will versus free
won't point, I guess, I guess inthe in the context of the free
won't when you're trying to shuteverything out, what do we kind
of Max out at that we can block out or be taking in at any given
moment before we start losing that that focus?
(04:44):
Yeah, it's really interesting. I find a really interesting
concept related to that. It's just this idea of load.
There's only so much sensory load we can carry before our
abilities start to diminish in some areas.
Now, there's some kind of littleexceptions sometimes that those
things were like a small amount of background distraction or,
you know, there's some evidence suggesting that when there's
(05:06):
some white noise in the background, people show some
slight improvement in these sorts of things.
But generally speaking, as we take in more stimulus from our
environments, our ability to kind of retain focus on on one
specific given task starts to diminish.
Head up displays on cars was a great real world example of
them. I think they do have them now,
but the displays they have are really, really minimal.
(05:29):
And I think in the past, they had these really elaborate head
up displays and, you know, the stats were showing that people
who were driving those cars werehaving accidents at much higher
rates. So it does tend to tax our
attention, some of that sort of extraneous information in our,
in our worlds. But within that though, we are,
you know, really, really good atsort of information filtering as
well. And, and a lot of the things
that we kind of take for, for granted, you know, at any given
(05:52):
moment in when things are reasonably sort of quiet, we're
ignoring a whole bunch of sensations that are going on in
our body and our clothing and all these sorts of things.
And, you know, even cocktail party effects when there's all
these different conversations going on around you that might
be a similar volume or different.
And you can selectively focusingon one specific conversation.
It's a, you know, really incredible ability, that kind of
(06:12):
information filtering. Yeah.
That's very, very interesting toknow, especially around just
that point you mentioned too around white noise Is, is there
anything that kind of supports listening to that in the
background that will help you shut out everything else to
focus on the the one thing that's in front of you?
Yeah. And again, it's a kind of a, a
bit of a threshold thing. So I think at a small and low
(06:36):
level and there's different kindof theories about why that might
be the case. But almost like it, you know,
there's part of there's this sort of distinction between top
down attention that's, you know,using our executive systems.
This is what I want to do at this moment in time.
Now if that was all that was going on and you know, we're
(06:56):
hunting in the African Savannah or, you know, focused on one
specific task and then somethingreally, really dangerous happens
or there's something that needs us to shift our attention.
If all that was governing what we're doing is this sort of top
down focus, then we would be in all sorts of strife because we
need to be able to disengage from those tasks.
So on the flip side of this is this, this bottom up stimulus
(07:17):
driven stuff. So sudden onset things, hearing
our name in the background really, you know, sudden sorts
sort of things will grab our attention.
So kind of the, the idea with having that little bit of
background stuff happening is that it may be reduces our
scanning our backgrounds a little bit.
And so that we're actually more likely to be immersed in that
(07:38):
top down, remaining focused rather than picking up little
bits of background distractions that kind of pull us away.
Now with that said, the higher you know, the more stimulus
we're adding and the more information that is is coming
into it, the more likely we might be then to be sort of
pulled play to that a bit more. Right.
Is that, is that why you can listen to kind of soft
(07:59):
background, whether it's the sound of an ocean or the
rainforest, you know, when you're trying to go to sleep, is
that to kind of help you shut everything out and then get to
sleep? Yeah, look, and that it can vary
a lot from different people. I know some people who are like,
no, I just need it completely quiet and sometimes I, you know,
earplugs in and all the rest of it.
But other people, it just gives them that little, you know, if
(08:19):
they're all up in their head andchewing over the day's events
or, or worrying, then it just gives them that little bit of
external focus. But you know, they're, they're
not listening to some soothing death metal as they're going on.
So it'll be a bit too stimulating.
How that would work? Low level background stuff can
be helpful and, you know, other people, you know, saying they
listen to music a little bit when they're studying, but also
(08:42):
some people say that very specific types of music that
they can listen to when they're studying.
Like I'm, I do a lot of obviously, you know, reading and
writing and I find I can just doinstrumental stuff, but as soon
as I'm listening to stuff with many lyrics, it starts to
interfere with, yeah, the other tasks.
Yeah, to be honest, I find that for myself, you know, I can
listen to instrumental of almostany type of music and still keep
(09:04):
the focus on the task. But yeah, once the lyrics are
there, it's definitely way more engaging.
All right, let's let's get back around to the kind of Internet
and impact on attention span. So what what exactly does
attention span mean in the context of the digital age?
Has the meaning evolved as the technology has and and how is it
measured? Yeah.
So it's interesting and I think a really something sort of comes
(09:29):
through a lot once we start diving into some of the research
on this is the kind of this interesting distinction between
what what we tend to do are kindof behavioural tendencies,
right? And when when it comes to
attention span, I think the way that's often operationalized
popularly is how much we tend tosustain our focus without
(09:54):
becoming distracted by somethingelse.
You know, just how much we tend to focus on one piece of
information before we scroll on,how much we spend on a
particular news article before we've got enough information, we
skip to something else. Often that's assessed a bit
differently within the context of, you know, cognitive
assessment tasks where we are really assessing, all right, how
(10:17):
long can someone sustain focus and still be continuing to pick
up bits of information that are thrown at them within the
context of of, yeah, some sort of assessment task or similar.
But I think broadly it's that kind of what's the duration that
people are sustaining focus on something for is probably, you
know that general working definition of it.
Yeah. OK.
So I guess it's it's not really anyone kind of defined measure.
(10:40):
You know, obviously if you want to try and focus on something
that's 5 seconds long, that's a lot easier than, you know,
something that's that's half an hour.
OK, let's go back to that research that we touched on.
What's it been showing over timein this context?
In terms of research on attention.
Yeah, and the impact of the digital world.
Yeah, absolutely. So I think as many people would
(11:04):
know, there's the research on attention spans as it pertains
to how much time people are spending on individual bits of
information with within online forums, whether that be social
media or, or sort of other formats has gradually reduced
over time. So we are, you know, most of
these sort of behavioural measures are suggesting that the
(11:25):
amount of time that we're sort of attending to or focusing on
that sort of information has hasreduced a bit.
Now the I guess there's been allsorts of, you know, concerns
about flow on effects for attention and learning and and
there is this real subjective sense, I think from from a lot
of people will volunteer at that.
(11:47):
You know, I just, I can't retainfocus for longer periods of time
and this is an ability that's being diminished.
The really interesting thing is,is that there is just no
evidence that the abilities themselves have diminished.
If you sit someone down in a room, you give them one of
these, you know, cognitive tasksthat have been used over
(12:07):
decades. There has just been no evidence
of any decline. Generation on generation.
These abilities are good and they tend to be either, you
know, sustained or slightly better than they were.
So it's interesting in in the sense that what we are actually
doing behaviourally is, you know, occurring over shorter
(12:29):
durations. But when, you know, we have the
the proverbial gun to our heads or, or we're in a situation
where it's like just do this thing, we can actually call on
that ability, you know, without too much difficulty.
Yeah, right. So I guess then it just kind of
comes down to several factors, one of which would be kind of
interest and engagement with whatever's in front of you.
(12:51):
But how long does it take for I guess the brain, as you said,
you know, we're, we're driven byshorter and shorter types of
content. How, how long does it take for
us to be able to go, okay, I'm going to focus on something long
form now and be fine and then something short for is there any
kind of movement within the ability over time?
Look, I think 100% and it's one of those general kind of truisms
(13:15):
a bit while we've got this kind of base level of ability, right.
And when we think about things like working memory or this, you
know, inhibitory control abilityor anything else like that,
these things seem to stay prettyintact across the lifetime.
You know, they're not sort of changed or, or diminished, but
we tend to get better at what wepractise in terms of, you know,
(13:39):
habitual, you know, behavioural sort of thing.
So when we practise switching between lots of different, you
know, fast paced things, as you know, is often the case in the
demands that are put on us from work and all the rest of it.
We get practised at switching from one thing to another thing
to another thing. And we can go from, you know,
detailed conversation on one thing to another, you know,
(14:00):
quick email, firing on a different topic and all the rest
of it. And we, and we're very practised
at that, but I think as a lot ofpeople report then when it comes
time to write, here's this slightly more onerous thing that
requires me to focus on this kind of thing and I need to push
myself through it a little bit. They experience more challenging
difficulty to that. And, and my suspicion is that
that's partly because we are practising a lot of switching
(14:23):
between lots of sort of small bits of information and perhaps
also becoming accustomed to getting little bits of
information really, really quickly out of things at sort of
shorter and shorter duration. So that yeah, it feels harder to
do these other things. I guess, I guess the connection
I'm trying to draw on on that then it's a lot of people say
that they can focus and get a lot more done in say a working
(14:46):
from home kind of environment because they don't have all
those distractions when they're in the office.
So say you're you're trying to sit at your desk in an office or
wherever you work and you've gotpeople coming up to you
interrupting you, you've got emails flying around, you know
all of that thing. Is there any research or
evidence into when you say stop your focus, talk to somebody and
(15:07):
then try and get back into something?
Is there any lag on on how long that takes?
Oh, definitely, yeah. And borne out by a lot of
research. So even sort of switching
between two similar tasks, if we're, I don't know, going from
one verbal task to another verbal task, but then to a
visual spatial task, it'll be more challenging switching to
(15:29):
that other. And this is kind of like what
they call set shifting. We shift from one sort of
intellectual set to another set.So it's almost like, you know,
when we're talking about attending to a single thing,
well, you know, if we're, if we're reading an article or
something, obviously there's no single thing.
There's many, many different words, but it's all kind of
thematically gathered. But when we switch from focusing
(15:51):
on that kind of thematically related content to having an
unrelated conversation to then trying to, OK, where was I?
What was I doing again? All right, that's it.
There is that little bit of a cost in in time.
Now with that said, there's also, you know, amounts of time
over which it's actually, you know, and you've probably heard
about Pomodoro techniques and these sorts of things where it
can be helpful to focus for, I don't know, 20 minutes on a task
(16:12):
and then have a brief bake and these break and these sorts of
things. Because we are, you know, very
time limited in sustaining that high level of focus sometimes
too. OK, can can you train that high
level focus or is it something that our brain caps out at?
You can train it, but it's, it'sone of those things that I think
(16:34):
again relates to habits that we use across many, many different
contexts and settings. And when we practise that
switching again and again and again, I think it does come at
the cost sometimes of that ability to maintain that focus.
But you know, as is kind of popularised as well, things like
mindfulness are probably among those techniques where it's
(16:57):
about kind of just that immersion in that present moment
and building the focus in and around that rather than
switching between multiple different things.
So yeah, I think absolutely it is possible we we haven't
necessarily lost those abilitiespermanently where we're perhaps
just not as not as practical just or or not as inclined to be
(17:19):
using them as frequently as perhaps we we were in the past.
Okay. Can you tell us a bit about the
notion of brain plasticity? And then if it is adapting to
whatever we're feeding it, essentially, you know, how does
that evolve? And I guess has the brain
changed from where we would havebeen 500 years ago to to now?
(17:40):
Or is it a very natural biological thing?
Look. Both in some ways so and, and I
think particularly when it comesto humans, one of the things
that probably sets us apart a little bit from, you know, some
other other mammals and perhaps some of our other sort of great
apes is the fact that we're built with perhaps a higher
degree of plasticity and learning potential.
(18:03):
You know, you see giraffe or or a foal or something that's born
immediately, within an hour it'sup and it's walking and all
these sorts of things. But we have these ridiculously
immature infants that are kind of highly dependent on us for a
long period of time. But within that, there's this
greater flexibility and capacityto learn, you know, different
(18:24):
types of information. You see this across amazingly
diverse different sorts of cultural norms that we see and
the ways in which humans have been able to adapt to incredibly
different conditions all across the planet, which is what been
one of the reasons that we're sort of, you know, been so
successful in that regard. But there is some pretty
fundamental neural architecture that we're operating on.
(18:46):
You know, it's that classic. We've got all this very Stone
Age hardware operating on this sort of, you know, 21st century
software. So there are things that we can
just get, like you were saying before, overloaded with there's
only so much stimulus that we can kind of, you know, take in
from from our environments. And as you were sort of saying,
I think our environments have changed just insanely
(19:09):
immeasurably. You know, you referenced the
last, you know, 500 years. But even beyond that, since, you
know, agriculture sort of got going, you know, 10 to 12,000
years ago. And the sort of
industrialization of the, the world's that we're living in,
we've gone from these very smallcommunities where we were kind
of new and were able to predict the behaviour of sort of
(19:30):
absolutely everyone to this, youknow, very highly industrialised
and centralised cities where we interact with many, many people
with a, with a sort of a sheer set of rules about how that
goes. But, you know, many people that
we're sort of unfamiliar with. So, but but also beyond that,
the amount of information that we're exposed to I think in our,
(19:52):
in our daily lives, someone you know, brought from 500 years ago
would be be very overwhelmed by the sort of environment in which
they found themselves, I would imagine.
So I think perhaps one of those key abilities that, you know,
we've perhaps been improving on over a time and adapting that
considerably is that filtering capacity.
(20:13):
Being able to very rapidly screen what within this sea of
information in front of me is the really critically important
information and what it what around it is sort of perhaps a
bit less important. I guess obviously the the the
environment of the Internet is just kind of relentless.
It's constantly throwing everything at you.
So I guess it's gaining that ability to philtre out the, you
(20:35):
know, the shit and and focus on what's good is is a helpful
thing. So is that just us kind of
adapting to the environment? Yeah.
And you could kind of see adapting to the environment, but
I think that that sort of information flow, you know,
remember the, you know, you, youmight nearly be old enough to
remember the early days of the, of dial up Internet where you'd
sort of connect with me. You'd, you'd connect to things
(20:58):
and then you'd hear the tone, you'd go away and you'd make a
cup of coffee as the computer, you know, loads up and all the
rest of it. But the amount of time now that
it actually takes for us to get any web page or, or any sort of
information is so much faster than it used to be.
So we've probably got a lot moreinformation coming at us a lot
more rapidly than it was before.And I guess we're kind of, you
(21:19):
know, employing tools both within our own cognitive
systems, but even, you know, I mean, control F these days, you
know, the amount of time, you know, within this vast document.
All right. What is the absolute critical
bits of information that I need to to sort of seek out of this
so that I can fulfil whatever task it is that I'm trying to do
and move on to the next kind of demanding thing that's going on?
(21:40):
I guess that leads me next to kind of the world of social
media. We can safely assume that people
are hooked on these kind of quick dopamine hits and seek out
that short form content which gives them that.
So are we almost just tuning ourselves into this tick tocky
type stuff at the detriment of thinking that we can watch a 2
hour film or something? Yeah, it is.
(22:01):
It is interesting that and even I don't know, I went and just I
was watching an old film not that long ago.
I think it was something like Groundhog Day and I was like,
wow, editing has changed so mucheven sort of in the last 20
years. So and whether that's a result
of, you know, the kind of fast paced information that we're
using to, you know, receiving somuch.
(22:24):
And it is interesting that phenomenon because obviously
that potentially one of those effects of, you know, short form
video content amongst a whole bunch of other things is that,
you know, the tendency to dwell for a longer duration on
specific bits of information andour tendency to kind of have
shrunk that window. Always that interesting thing
(22:46):
though is that ability is intact.
So when we're kind of required to do it or there is a demand on
us to kind of do something like that, it doesn't seem to have
disappeared. So I think it's in that middle
space where there's our kind of desire or tendency to want to do
these things is kind of reducing, but maybe the demands
(23:08):
of certain contexts or situations, whether that be, you
know, university study or something else saying no, no,
you need to sit and really, you know, soak up this information.
Those things can collide sometimes.
So, and things that I get curious about is whether or not
say short form video content exposure that people who engage
in higher levels of that, whether they might need a higher
(23:32):
threshold of, you know, anxiety or, or sort of imperative about
their their impending deadline to actually get them moving with
it. Because the amount of, you know,
requirement that the environmenthas to push on them before they
they sort of draw on that cognitive ability might
potentially be higher. So I guess again, it's that kind
(23:52):
of the ability seems to be there.
But you're absolutely right thatwhat we tend to do across these
multiple settings seems to be kind of shrinking and there and
there may be consequences for that in terms of particularly
when performing tasks where we need to kind of have that slow
more sustained focus over a longer period.
Does that manifest, you know, any changes once we're away from
(24:16):
devices? It's hard to say because a lot
of the time when we sort of seekto assess it in, in a research
context, most often we do that. We, we take people away from
their devices, we put them in a room that's not particularly
stimulating or anything else. And we give them these sort of
validated cognitive tasks where they have one specific thing
that they need to be doing. So when those sorts of contexts
(24:39):
are implemented, people seem to perform fine.
You know, they, they are absolutely, you know, no
problems in, in performing thoseabilities.
I think it's when we are in those sorts of contexts where we
have our devices and we have those sorts of distractions and
you know, you might you've had that experience or know people
who just almost get that that itch where things are a little
(25:00):
bit boring or a little bit quiet.
And, you know, they just, I'll pick up my device and, you know,
engage with that a little bit. And I think, you know, even sort
of anecdotally, things like there are potential positives
associated with just sitting with a little bit of discomfort
at times, I think as well. And, you know, just small
(25:20):
anecdotal things like our tendency to sort of
spontaneously engage with strangers, you know, So I
remember when I, when I was a lad, you know, before a, before
a tutorial or a class or something at university where,
you know, there would be other people when you stand around and
you were just standing around and there was nothing else to
kind of do. So you did kind of have a, have
(25:40):
a bit of a chat and engage in these sorts of things.
And I think the tendency for us to sort of switch to our devices
as a, as a bit of a sense of comfort in some ways could
diminish some of those opportunities at, at specific
points in time. With that said, I think there is
the reverse side of it is that people have very rich online
(26:02):
lives in many ways as well. So, you know, while there's a
lot of scrolling and all the rest of it that goes on, see a
lot of young people, you know, sharing amazing artworks and
really creative endeavours online and and connecting with a
whole bunch of other people who are doing interesting similar
things. So I think there can be those
negative consequences, but also perhaps the the potential things
(26:27):
that people are gaining from some of those are overlooked at
times as well. And I guess that would obviously
just come with being more nativeto, you know, the digital world
and, and the possibilities are say, you know, we, we mentioned
a few minutes ago around, you know, dial up Internet, which,
you know, if you told someone tosay 13 years old about that now,
it would seem completely alien. But you know, that level of, of
(26:52):
kind of slowness and, and offering compared to what there
is now is, is night and day. And that's only in what, what,
30 years Max and. If that and it's kind of that
acceleration, yeah, which has. Been incredible.
So, so beyond just shifts in ourattention, how does our social
media habits impact us? You know, in a wider sense, I
(27:16):
guess, do we get affected differently by engaging and
spending so much time on social as opposed to anything else
digital? Yeah, look, I, I think there has
been some very legitimate and very large concerns around
social media use and some of themental health impacts.
Interestingly, I, you know, I've, I've gradually come to the
(27:37):
conclusion that a lot of them are, you know, quite overstated.
And I think it's been in part because of the way it has been
measured in the past, has been people's kind of guesses of how
much they're using, which largely seems to be, you know,
doesn't overlap much with how much they actually use.
(27:59):
So what what's been measured is how concerned people are of
their social media use, which quite logically is related to
how concerned and anxious they are about the world more
broadly. So you've gotten these sort of
correlations between people's concern over social media use
and concern, you know, more broadly.
So, and it's almost led to this conclusion.
Well, social media use is associated with anxiety and
(28:20):
depression and these other sortsof factors.
Whereas when we actually measurethese things using mobile phone
data or other sorts of things, these are really, really low
associations and often they're just non existent.
We just simply don't find them when we measure them in the
other ways. Now with that said, I think what
does seem to come out is that itdepends.
(28:41):
So you know, as with a lot of things, I think you can engage
with things in ways that are immensely reaching.
You know, we can connect with networks of people who have very
similar shared and overlapping interests and and build each
other's capacities and share knowledge in ways that just was
not possible previously. Now the flip side of that, I
(29:05):
think if people have a tendency to to worry and, and I often
recall as an example, remember that at the start of COVID,
where ever there was so much uncertainty out there and
everyone was sort of scanning information constantly trying to
figure out, you know, how does this affect?
How fast is it spreading? Is this in our country?
(29:26):
You know who who's being affected by it?
If someone's sort of habitually concerned about lots of
different things in their world and they have that tendency to
engage with social media in thatway where they're just on the
lookout for threatening or negative stuff.
That's really has the potential to skew their perception of the
world in ways because as, as we know, these things don't just
(29:46):
randomly select information, they feed you more of what you
are potentially engaging with and interested with.
So I think in those sorts of contexts and, and we know of
other examples of, well, so particularly people with eating
weight and shape concerns, you know, seeing Reels full of, you
know, Instagram influences with flawless bodies probably isn't
(30:07):
going to be something that's, yeah, going to be particularly
helpful. So I, I think the consensus that
a lot of researchers are beginning to move towards or be
it, you know, gradually is that social media use isn't a single
thing necessarily. And it really does depend on the
way in which it's engaged with in terms of what its potential
consequences might be on mental health.
(30:29):
I know we've touched on it a little bit, but you know, in the
context of our emotions, even our identities or how we relate
to each other, is there any impact on on the way that I
guess we navigate the digital world crossing over into the way
real life or they seem like verydifferent ways of being?
Yeah. Look, I think there is quite a
bit of, you know, research in that space and particularly
(30:51):
within the, you know, social psychology field more that has
looked at the, the sort of way in which sort of online social
environments potentially overlapwith, you know, our, our
extended social groups and, and the like.
And there has been bits of research sort of suggested that
we are perhaps, you know, tending towards a larger number
(31:12):
of more casual engagements with people online as opposed to a
smaller number of really high quality intimate friendship
relationships. And and I think there's sort of
variations in that expression aswell.
So sometimes people who have very active online presences are
perhaps more likely to have a very large number of, you know,
(31:36):
very wide social network. But in terms of that really
close, high quality friendship groups, that might be
comparatively lacking. But of course, there's huge
variation in that, you know, across people generally.
But I have seen a little bit of research that suggests some of
those effects. Yeah.
When it comes to attention and how much we're kind of feeling
(31:58):
like we're losing it when we're online and engaging with things.
You know, I, I was once speakingto a young guy, I think he was
about 21 years old, and he was telling me how his attention
span was, was shot these days. But then he explained to me that
while he would be studying for university exams, he would have
the notes on one screen and be watching a movie through
(32:20):
headphones, you know, and, and with his phone next to it.
And, and then that's what made me think about this in, in the
1st place. It sounds like the attention
span is maybe not sure, it's kind of a a different way of of
taking in information because I personally don't think I could
handle that. But if someone that is claiming
that they're worried that their attention span is getting hurt
(32:43):
through, you know, consumption of the digital world and online
stuff, is there any strategies they can employ to try and
reclaim their focus? Or is it simply a matter of just
just paying attention to something else?
I think it's a it's a fascinating example that you
were sort of identifying there that kind of, you know, on the
(33:04):
one hand is it is it in some ways almost a superpower that
you've got this content kind of going in the background, you're
still being able to engage, but it's interesting.
It's almost, you know, that thatan extended example perhaps of
that having a light bit of musicin the background that just kind
of dampens our tendency to switch away.
I guess if you're so used to a really high level of stimulus
(33:26):
operating, perhaps you're almostdampening that, that tendency to
switch away by by turning up thevolume on the, on the
information that's in the background potentially.
And it's, yeah, it is, it is really interesting that.
But I the thing that I'd be curious about, and you know, I'm
almost sort of, you know, thinking about the, the next
research project as you're talking about it.
Is that the possibility? I'd, I'd really be interested to
(33:49):
find out whether or not someone who has that tendency would
perform better, say on a, on a memory task or something when
they do have that background information versus when they're
just in a, in a room with no distractions and they're sort of
taking that, that information in.
And that might be a bit more of a kind kind of a habit type type
thing. So it would be really
(34:09):
interesting to kind of, you know, investigate it from that
perspective. But I think to to the question
of are there things that we can do to kind of maintain or or
retain that high level of focus when we need it to be there?
Absolutely. And it's kind of coming back to
that we get better at what we practise, I guess is, is part of
(34:31):
it. So to the, the extent that we
can kind of practise some of those mindful tasks a bit or in
different contexts. And it doesn't have to be, you
know, it can be these little 5 minute app type things that are,
you know, helpful for those sorts of things, but all sorts
of just minimal little tasks. You know, you've probably caught
yourself sitting there eating, you know, a sandwich, listening
(34:52):
to music and scrolling on your phone all at the same time.
Just that sort of bombardment ofstimuli, thinking about just
identifying single tasks and going, no, I'm just going to do
that. Beyond that though, I think
actually being a bit more deliberate when we are taking on
tasks that we know needs that focus, rather than treating them
as things that we can switch into and out of is probably
(35:15):
something that's quite useful aswell.
Because as we're saying, you switch from one thing to another
thing to another thing. Right now I need high intensity
focus. It's almost like, all right,
well, what what's going to be ideal in terms of being able to
do that? Because you know, the problem
with phones is I remember when procrastinating, I would be
cleaning the coffee machine and doing all these sorts of things
there. Phones are such rewarding and,
(35:37):
and really low level procrastination.
You don't have to do much to kind of get a bit of a kick out
of them and they're right there.So I think moving a device far
away from you while you are needing to do that, you know,
probably a lot of people are used to working with one or two
or three screens these days as well, can have some efficiencies
with it. But at the same time you're
getting more stimulus there and you have that capacity to switch
(35:59):
a bit more. So reducing that down and then
going, all right, do I need to be online for the next half an
hour while I'm reading this thing or doing whatever else it
is. So again, it's kind of like,
well, when you do just get that little, this is boring, I'd
really like to just switch to myphone.
Your phone's not there. OK, I guess I'll keep going with
this sort of thing or just just look up this unrelated thing
(36:22):
that I'm looking to, oh, the internet's not OK, OK, that's
why I'm focusing on. So it just increases the
threshold that it takes you to actually step away from that
task and almost guides you back a little bit.
So I think some of those sorts of techniques can be sort of
very helpful and also sometimes just accountability.
So I think when you can have a situation where you're like,
(36:46):
right, I need to do this within this next half hour and you tell
someone else then that who's in turn is going to be accountable
for you for what? For whatever they're doing.
These sorts of things can help you kind of push through some of
that as well. So I think, you know, sounds
from everything that we've, we've gone over today, there's
not really any real consensus or, or evidence that the
(37:08):
Internet has permanently alteredour, our attention spans or the
ability to focus. And it sounds like it's more
environmental. And if the time is spent kind of
crafting that environment that you know, is going to work best
for you, whether, you know, as we, as we touched on earlier, it
is working from home and not having those distractions or,
you know, putting in some headphones with a bit of white
(37:30):
noise. It sounds like that's actually
the key factor in in what is going to help people
concentrate. Not so much, you know, claiming
that the Internet has ruined their attention spans.
Is that correct? Yeah.
Look, and I think that's the immensely reassuring thing that
has sort of happened from what I've kind of systematically, you
know, investigated through the literature reviews showing these
(37:52):
abilities seem to be largely intact.
We have not permanently compromised our our attention or
our cognitive capabilities in ways that aren't retrievable.
What we have changed and changedpretty massively are our our
attention related habits. So how much we tend to do these
things and that sort of reclaiming of attention then
(38:13):
involves, all right, well, how do I change these habits?
How do I set things up so that Ican create an environment where
I'm more likely to be able to immerse myself in in the things
that are going to be helpful in that context?
Sometimes, yeah. But no, very reassuring that we
we haven't busted our brains fundamentally and permanently.
So that's very good to know for anybody that is a bit concerned
about that. What can people you know?
(38:35):
How can they follow you to with what you're up to?
Yeah, sure. So I guess I'm on Blue Sky and
LinkedIn a little bit and post bits and pieces of the research
that we put out in in our labs. We are, I guess I've been, I'm
part of a, a research project here in WA with Healthway
looking at how young LGBTQ plus people are, you know, using
(38:57):
social media and the like in ways that can be really
enhancing for their mental health.
So recognising that this is kindof something that's, you know,
in endemic amongst young people and can be used for potential
great benefit, but also beyond that, you know, really
interested in how this can be shaping mental health, both for
(39:18):
better and for worse sometimes. And because it is such a, a
changing landscaping environment, there's always, you
know, sort of new and interesting things out there to,
for us to be sort of understanding and what sort of
impact it's having on, on both our our emotions and how we, we
process the world and our cognitive capability.
So it's something that will kindof, you know, keep chipping away
(39:39):
at as, as they come up. And but yeah, no, please, by all
means have a follow. And we tend to put research out
as as we find it. Thank you so much for joining us
today, Patrick. That was great.
Been a great pleasure Gareth, thanks for having me.
For more info on what we've discussed today, check out the
show notes. If you enjoyed this one, you can
subscribe to Ruined by the Internet on your favourite
(40:00):
podcast app and help spread the word by sharing this episode or
leaving a review. I'm Gareth King, see you next
time.
Welcome to Ruined by the Internet.
I'm Gareth King. Today we're asking, has the
Internet ruined our attention spans thanks to its relentless
stream of information, endless notifications, an explosion of
rapid fire, short form content? Are we losing our capacity for
sustained focus and deep concentration?
To help us get a better perspective, we're joined by
(00:20):
Doctor Patrick Clark, a clinicalpsychologist and associate
professor at Curtin University. Patrick, thank you so much for
joining us and welcome to the show.
Great pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Before we begin, can you tell usa bit about the work that you do
and the journey that led you to this area of expertise?
(00:42):
Yeah, So I guess I'm comparatively new to to this
area, although I've got quite a history and a background working
in the sort of attention space. So a lot of the work I did
through my my PhD and some of the sort of more clinically
applied work I've done in psychology has been about
understanding the way in which people allocate their attention
(01:05):
to things that might signal potential danger in the
environment or be the source of anxiety.
And how the way attention can bejust distributed amongst these
things. Or how, you know, things that
seem to just pop out of the background for some people, you
know, more, more threatening faces or all the rest of it
might shape people's emotional experiences.
And it was kind of through this and through some studies that we
(01:28):
were running with where we were doing little, little training
tasks, trying to train attentiontowards or away from different
types of content that I eventually started thinking
about, Well, if we're doing these little tasks that might
take 10 or 15 minutes and hopingto see changes in the way people
are processing information sort of around that time.
We're like, we're spending increasingly large amounts of
time on our digital devices, youknow, two to three hours a day.
(01:51):
And thinking that, you know, the, the, the feedback loops
that might be happening between humans and their devices could
be having some pretty hefty effects potentially on both, you
know, their patents of cognitionand the way they process the
world, but also, you know, theiremotional experiences as well.
And I started to get very interested in it from there and
kind of came in at, at an interesting and kind of critical
(02:13):
point, I think where people werejust starting to realise that a
lot of the measures that they were using in this research,
which was mostly relying on people estimating how much they
were using, might not be kind ofa gold standard way to be doing
it. And I guess I was sort of of a
similar mind thinking we need tobe really rigorous in how we're
sort of assessing some of these things.
And and it's sort of, yeah, escalated from there.
(02:35):
You know, I understand there's been quite a lot of research
around different types of attention, the impact over time,
But before we get into that, canyou briefly explain what the
different types of attention are?
Yeah, it's really interesting because we talk about attention
like it's a single thing, but you know, attention can you
know, more broadly be operationalized as a set of
(02:57):
processes. So you know, I guess typically
when we're thinking about attention, it's about what
maintains our focus on a single thing or a or a subset of
things. But there's a few kind of sub
processes that are involved in that.
And you know, perhaps one of themost critical ones is this
process is called inhibition or inhibitory control.
(03:17):
And you know, it's sort of relates to this other very broad
idea about, you know, we don't so much have free will as free
won't. You know, the, the process of
inhibiting all this irrelevant information that's bombarding
our senses in the environment atany given point in time is so
critical to us to actually be able to retain focus on
something. So there's this sort of, you
know, inhibition process which allows us to retain focus on
(03:41):
something for sustained periods of time.
But then there's other processeslike switching, being able to
jump between alternative bits ofinformation that might be either
in different parts of the world,but also maybe information that
might be in the same part of theworld.
I can be looking at a piece of text and I can be looking at the
colour of that text or the font of that text and different sorts
of properties. So these sorts of attentional
(04:02):
switches that might sort of happen.
And then there's sort of this, you know, higher level
processes. You've probably heard a bit
about working memory and the like that are kind of, you know,
use some of these attentional processes, but they're more
about how much information you can hold in mind and how you can
manipulate some of those processes as well.
So those are kind of the some ofthe broad basic, you know,
processes. Yeah, that that contribute to
(04:24):
our experience of attention and attention focus, I guess.
This that's interesting around the the free will versus free
won't point, I guess, I guess inthe in the context of the free
won't when you're trying to shuteverything out, what do we kind
of Max out at that we can block out or be taking in at any given
moment before we start losing that that focus?
(04:44):
Yeah, it's really interesting. I find a really interesting
concept related to that. It's just this idea of load.
There's only so much sensory load we can carry before our
abilities start to diminish in some areas.
Now, there's some kind of littleexceptions sometimes that those
things were like a small amount of background distraction or,
you know, there's some evidence suggesting that when there's
(05:06):
some white noise in the background, people show some
slight improvement in these sorts of things.
But generally speaking, as we take in more stimulus from our
environments, our ability to kind of retain focus on on one
specific given task starts to diminish.
Head up displays on cars was a great real world example of
them. I think they do have them now,
but the displays they have are really, really minimal.
(05:29):
And I think in the past, they had these really elaborate head
up displays and, you know, the stats were showing that people
who were driving those cars werehaving accidents at much higher
rates. So it does tend to tax our
attention, some of that sort of extraneous information in our,
in our worlds. But within that though, we are,
you know, really, really good atsort of information filtering as
well. And, and a lot of the things
that we kind of take for, for granted, you know, at any given
(05:52):
moment in when things are reasonably sort of quiet, we're
ignoring a whole bunch of sensations that are going on in
our body and our clothing and all these sorts of things.
And, you know, even cocktail party effects when there's all
these different conversations going on around you that might
be a similar volume or different.
And you can selectively focusingon one specific conversation.
It's a, you know, really incredible ability, that kind of
(06:12):
information filtering. Yeah.
That's very, very interesting toknow, especially around just
that point you mentioned too around white noise Is, is there
anything that kind of supports listening to that in the
background that will help you shut out everything else to
focus on the the one thing that's in front of you?
Yeah. And again, it's a kind of a, a
bit of a threshold thing. So I think at a small and low
(06:36):
level and there's different kindof theories about why that might
be the case. But almost like it, you know,
there's part of there's this sort of distinction between top
down attention that's, you know,using our executive systems.
This is what I want to do at this moment in time.
Now if that was all that was going on and you know, we're
(06:56):
hunting in the African Savannah or, you know, focused on one
specific task and then somethingreally, really dangerous happens
or there's something that needs us to shift our attention.
If all that was governing what we're doing is this sort of top
down focus, then we would be in all sorts of strife because we
need to be able to disengage from those tasks.
So on the flip side of this is this, this bottom up stimulus
(07:17):
driven stuff. So sudden onset things, hearing
our name in the background really, you know, sudden sorts
sort of things will grab our attention.
So kind of the, the idea with having that little bit of
background stuff happening is that it may be reduces our
scanning our backgrounds a little bit.
And so that we're actually more likely to be immersed in that
(07:38):
top down, remaining focused rather than picking up little
bits of background distractions that kind of pull us away.
Now with that said, the higher you know, the more stimulus
we're adding and the more information that is is coming
into it, the more likely we might be then to be sort of
pulled play to that a bit more. Right.
Is that, is that why you can listen to kind of soft
(07:59):
background, whether it's the sound of an ocean or the
rainforest, you know, when you're trying to go to sleep, is
that to kind of help you shut everything out and then get to
sleep? Yeah, look, and that it can vary
a lot from different people. I know some people who are like,
no, I just need it completely quiet and sometimes I, you know,
earplugs in and all the rest of it.
But other people, it just gives them that little, you know, if
(08:19):
they're all up in their head andchewing over the day's events
or, or worrying, then it just gives them that little bit of
external focus. But you know, they're, they're
not listening to some soothing death metal as they're going on.
So it'll be a bit too stimulating.
How that would work? Low level background stuff can
be helpful and, you know, other people, you know, saying they
listen to music a little bit when they're studying, but also
(08:42):
some people say that very specific types of music that
they can listen to when they're studying.
Like I'm, I do a lot of obviously, you know, reading and
writing and I find I can just doinstrumental stuff, but as soon
as I'm listening to stuff with many lyrics, it starts to
interfere with, yeah, the other tasks.
Yeah, to be honest, I find that for myself, you know, I can
listen to instrumental of almostany type of music and still keep
(09:04):
the focus on the task. But yeah, once the lyrics are
there, it's definitely way more engaging.
All right, let's let's get back around to the kind of Internet
and impact on attention span. So what what exactly does
attention span mean in the context of the digital age?
Has the meaning evolved as the technology has and and how is it
measured? Yeah.
So it's interesting and I think a really something sort of comes
(09:29):
through a lot once we start diving into some of the research
on this is the kind of this interesting distinction between
what what we tend to do are kindof behavioural tendencies,
right? And when when it comes to
attention span, I think the way that's often operationalized
popularly is how much we tend tosustain our focus without
(09:54):
becoming distracted by somethingelse.
You know, just how much we tend to focus on one piece of
information before we scroll on,how much we spend on a
particular news article before we've got enough information, we
skip to something else. Often that's assessed a bit
differently within the context of, you know, cognitive
assessment tasks where we are really assessing, all right, how
(10:17):
long can someone sustain focus and still be continuing to pick
up bits of information that are thrown at them within the
context of of, yeah, some sort of assessment task or similar.
But I think broadly it's that kind of what's the duration that
people are sustaining focus on something for is probably, you
know that general working definition of it.
Yeah. OK.
So I guess it's it's not really anyone kind of defined measure.
(10:40):
You know, obviously if you want to try and focus on something
that's 5 seconds long, that's a lot easier than, you know,
something that's that's half an hour.
OK, let's go back to that research that we touched on.
What's it been showing over timein this context?
In terms of research on attention.
Yeah, and the impact of the digital world.
Yeah, absolutely. So I think as many people would
(11:04):
know, there's the research on attention spans as it pertains
to how much time people are spending on individual bits of
information with within online forums, whether that be social
media or, or sort of other formats has gradually reduced
over time. So we are, you know, most of
these sort of behavioural measures are suggesting that the
(11:25):
amount of time that we're sort of attending to or focusing on
that sort of information has hasreduced a bit.
Now the I guess there's been allsorts of, you know, concerns
about flow on effects for attention and learning and and
there is this real subjective sense, I think from from a lot
of people will volunteer at that.
(11:47):
You know, I just, I can't retainfocus for longer periods of time
and this is an ability that's being diminished.
The really interesting thing is,is that there is just no
evidence that the abilities themselves have diminished.
If you sit someone down in a room, you give them one of
these, you know, cognitive tasksthat have been used over
(12:07):
decades. There has just been no evidence
of any decline. Generation on generation.
These abilities are good and they tend to be either, you
know, sustained or slightly better than they were.
So it's interesting in in the sense that what we are actually
doing behaviourally is, you know, occurring over shorter
(12:29):
durations. But when, you know, we have the
the proverbial gun to our heads or, or we're in a situation
where it's like just do this thing, we can actually call on
that ability, you know, without too much difficulty.
Yeah, right. So I guess then it just kind of
comes down to several factors, one of which would be kind of
interest and engagement with whatever's in front of you.
(12:51):
But how long does it take for I guess the brain, as you said,
you know, we're, we're driven byshorter and shorter types of
content. How, how long does it take for
us to be able to go, okay, I'm going to focus on something long
form now and be fine and then something short for is there any
kind of movement within the ability over time?
Look, I think 100% and it's one of those general kind of truisms
(13:15):
a bit while we've got this kind of base level of ability, right.
And when we think about things like working memory or this, you
know, inhibitory control abilityor anything else like that,
these things seem to stay prettyintact across the lifetime.
You know, they're not sort of changed or, or diminished, but
we tend to get better at what wepractise in terms of, you know,
(13:39):
habitual, you know, behavioural sort of thing.
So when we practise switching between lots of different, you
know, fast paced things, as you know, is often the case in the
demands that are put on us from work and all the rest of it.
We get practised at switching from one thing to another thing
to another thing. And we can go from, you know,
detailed conversation on one thing to another, you know,
(14:00):
quick email, firing on a different topic and all the rest
of it. And we, and we're very practised
at that, but I think as a lot ofpeople report then when it comes
time to write, here's this slightly more onerous thing that
requires me to focus on this kind of thing and I need to push
myself through it a little bit. They experience more challenging
difficulty to that. And, and my suspicion is that
that's partly because we are practising a lot of switching
(14:23):
between lots of sort of small bits of information and perhaps
also becoming accustomed to getting little bits of
information really, really quickly out of things at sort of
shorter and shorter duration. So that yeah, it feels harder to
do these other things. I guess, I guess the connection
I'm trying to draw on on that then it's a lot of people say
that they can focus and get a lot more done in say a working
(14:46):
from home kind of environment because they don't have all
those distractions when they're in the office.
So say you're you're trying to sit at your desk in an office or
wherever you work and you've gotpeople coming up to you
interrupting you, you've got emails flying around, you know
all of that thing. Is there any research or
evidence into when you say stop your focus, talk to somebody and
(15:07):
then try and get back into something?
Is there any lag on on how long that takes?
Oh, definitely, yeah. And borne out by a lot of
research. So even sort of switching
between two similar tasks, if we're, I don't know, going from
one verbal task to another verbal task, but then to a
visual spatial task, it'll be more challenging switching to
(15:29):
that other. And this is kind of like what
they call set shifting. We shift from one sort of
intellectual set to another set.So it's almost like, you know,
when we're talking about attending to a single thing,
well, you know, if we're, if we're reading an article or
something, obviously there's no single thing.
There's many, many different words, but it's all kind of
thematically gathered. But when we switch from focusing
(15:51):
on that kind of thematically related content to having an
unrelated conversation to then trying to, OK, where was I?
What was I doing again? All right, that's it.
There is that little bit of a cost in in time.
Now with that said, there's also, you know, amounts of time
over which it's actually, you know, and you've probably heard
about Pomodoro techniques and these sorts of things where it
can be helpful to focus for, I don't know, 20 minutes on a task
(16:12):
and then have a brief bake and these break and these sorts of
things. Because we are, you know, very
time limited in sustaining that high level of focus sometimes
too. OK, can can you train that high
level focus or is it something that our brain caps out at?
You can train it, but it's, it'sone of those things that I think
(16:34):
again relates to habits that we use across many, many different
contexts and settings. And when we practise that
switching again and again and again, I think it does come at
the cost sometimes of that ability to maintain that focus.
But you know, as is kind of popularised as well, things like
mindfulness are probably among those techniques where it's
(16:57):
about kind of just that immersion in that present moment
and building the focus in and around that rather than
switching between multiple different things.
So yeah, I think absolutely it is possible we we haven't
necessarily lost those abilitiespermanently where we're perhaps
just not as not as practical just or or not as inclined to be
(17:19):
using them as frequently as perhaps we we were in the past.
Okay. Can you tell us a bit about the
notion of brain plasticity? And then if it is adapting to
whatever we're feeding it, essentially, you know, how does
that evolve? And I guess has the brain
changed from where we would havebeen 500 years ago to to now?
(17:40):
Or is it a very natural biological thing?
Look. Both in some ways so and, and I
think particularly when it comesto humans, one of the things
that probably sets us apart a little bit from, you know, some
other other mammals and perhaps some of our other sort of great
apes is the fact that we're built with perhaps a higher
degree of plasticity and learning potential.
(18:03):
You know, you see giraffe or or a foal or something that's born
immediately, within an hour it'sup and it's walking and all
these sorts of things. But we have these ridiculously
immature infants that are kind of highly dependent on us for a
long period of time. But within that, there's this
greater flexibility and capacityto learn, you know, different
(18:24):
types of information. You see this across amazingly
diverse different sorts of cultural norms that we see and
the ways in which humans have been able to adapt to incredibly
different conditions all across the planet, which is what been
one of the reasons that we're sort of, you know, been so
successful in that regard. But there is some pretty
fundamental neural architecture that we're operating on.
(18:46):
You know, it's that classic. We've got all this very Stone
Age hardware operating on this sort of, you know, 21st century
software. So there are things that we can
just get, like you were saying before, overloaded with there's
only so much stimulus that we can kind of, you know, take in
from from our environments. And as you were sort of saying,
I think our environments have changed just insanely
(19:09):
immeasurably. You know, you referenced the
last, you know, 500 years. But even beyond that, since, you
know, agriculture sort of got going, you know, 10 to 12,000
years ago. And the sort of
industrialization of the, the world's that we're living in,
we've gone from these very smallcommunities where we were kind
of new and were able to predict the behaviour of sort of
(19:30):
absolutely everyone to this, youknow, very highly industrialised
and centralised cities where we interact with many, many people
with a, with a sort of a sheer set of rules about how that
goes. But, you know, many people that
we're sort of unfamiliar with. So, but but also beyond that,
the amount of information that we're exposed to I think in our,
(19:52):
in our daily lives, someone you know, brought from 500 years ago
would be be very overwhelmed by the sort of environment in which
they found themselves, I would imagine.
So I think perhaps one of those key abilities that, you know,
we've perhaps been improving on over a time and adapting that
considerably is that filtering capacity.
(20:13):
Being able to very rapidly screen what within this sea of
information in front of me is the really critically important
information and what it what around it is sort of perhaps a
bit less important. I guess obviously the the the
environment of the Internet is just kind of relentless.
It's constantly throwing everything at you.
So I guess it's gaining that ability to philtre out the, you
(20:35):
know, the shit and and focus on what's good is is a helpful
thing. So is that just us kind of
adapting to the environment? Yeah.
And you could kind of see adapting to the environment, but
I think that that sort of information flow, you know,
remember the, you know, you, youmight nearly be old enough to
remember the early days of the, of dial up Internet where you'd
sort of connect with me. You'd, you'd connect to things
(20:58):
and then you'd hear the tone, you'd go away and you'd make a
cup of coffee as the computer, you know, loads up and all the
rest of it. But the amount of time now that
it actually takes for us to get any web page or, or any sort of
information is so much faster than it used to be.
So we've probably got a lot moreinformation coming at us a lot
more rapidly than it was before.And I guess we're kind of, you
(21:19):
know, employing tools both within our own cognitive
systems, but even, you know, I mean, control F these days, you
know, the amount of time, you know, within this vast document.
All right. What is the absolute critical
bits of information that I need to to sort of seek out of this
so that I can fulfil whatever task it is that I'm trying to do
and move on to the next kind of demanding thing that's going on?
(21:40):
I guess that leads me next to kind of the world of social
media. We can safely assume that people
are hooked on these kind of quick dopamine hits and seek out
that short form content which gives them that.
So are we almost just tuning ourselves into this tick tocky
type stuff at the detriment of thinking that we can watch a 2
hour film or something? Yeah, it is.
(22:01):
It is interesting that and even I don't know, I went and just I
was watching an old film not that long ago.
I think it was something like Groundhog Day and I was like,
wow, editing has changed so mucheven sort of in the last 20
years. So and whether that's a result
of, you know, the kind of fast paced information that we're
using to, you know, receiving somuch.
(22:24):
And it is interesting that phenomenon because obviously
that potentially one of those effects of, you know, short form
video content amongst a whole bunch of other things is that,
you know, the tendency to dwell for a longer duration on
specific bits of information andour tendency to kind of have
shrunk that window. Always that interesting thing
(22:46):
though is that ability is intact.
So when we're kind of required to do it or there is a demand on
us to kind of do something like that, it doesn't seem to have
disappeared. So I think it's in that middle
space where there's our kind of desire or tendency to want to do
these things is kind of reducing, but maybe the demands
(23:08):
of certain contexts or situations, whether that be, you
know, university study or something else saying no, no,
you need to sit and really, you know, soak up this information.
Those things can collide sometimes.
So, and things that I get curious about is whether or not
say short form video content exposure that people who engage
in higher levels of that, whether they might need a higher
(23:32):
threshold of, you know, anxiety or, or sort of imperative about
their their impending deadline to actually get them moving with
it. Because the amount of, you know,
requirement that the environmenthas to push on them before they
they sort of draw on that cognitive ability might
potentially be higher. So I guess again, it's that kind
(23:52):
of the ability seems to be there.
But you're absolutely right thatwhat we tend to do across these
multiple settings seems to be kind of shrinking and there and
there may be consequences for that in terms of particularly
when performing tasks where we need to kind of have that slow
more sustained focus over a longer period.
Does that manifest, you know, any changes once we're away from
(24:16):
devices? It's hard to say because a lot
of the time when we sort of seekto assess it in, in a research
context, most often we do that. We, we take people away from
their devices, we put them in a room that's not particularly
stimulating or anything else. And we give them these sort of
validated cognitive tasks where they have one specific thing
that they need to be doing. So when those sorts of contexts
(24:39):
are implemented, people seem to perform fine.
You know, they, they are absolutely, you know, no
problems in, in performing thoseabilities.
I think it's when we are in those sorts of contexts where we
have our devices and we have those sorts of distractions and
you know, you might you've had that experience or know people
who just almost get that that itch where things are a little
(25:00):
bit boring or a little bit quiet.
And, you know, they just, I'll pick up my device and, you know,
engage with that a little bit. And I think, you know, even sort
of anecdotally, things like there are potential positives
associated with just sitting with a little bit of discomfort
at times, I think as well. And, you know, just small
(25:20):
anecdotal things like our tendency to sort of
spontaneously engage with strangers, you know, So I
remember when I, when I was a lad, you know, before a, before
a tutorial or a class or something at university where,
you know, there would be other people when you stand around and
you were just standing around and there was nothing else to
kind of do. So you did kind of have a, have
(25:40):
a bit of a chat and engage in these sorts of things.
And I think the tendency for us to sort of switch to our devices
as a, as a bit of a sense of comfort in some ways could
diminish some of those opportunities at, at specific
points in time. With that said, I think there is
the reverse side of it is that people have very rich online
(26:02):
lives in many ways as well. So, you know, while there's a
lot of scrolling and all the rest of it that goes on, see a
lot of young people, you know, sharing amazing artworks and
really creative endeavours online and and connecting with a
whole bunch of other people who are doing interesting similar
things. So I think there can be those
negative consequences, but also perhaps the the potential things
(26:27):
that people are gaining from some of those are overlooked at
times as well. And I guess that would obviously
just come with being more nativeto, you know, the digital world
and, and the possibilities are say, you know, we, we mentioned
a few minutes ago around, you know, dial up Internet, which,
you know, if you told someone tosay 13 years old about that now,
it would seem completely alien. But you know, that level of, of
(26:52):
kind of slowness and, and offering compared to what there
is now is, is night and day. And that's only in what, what,
30 years Max and. If that and it's kind of that
acceleration, yeah, which has. Been incredible.
So, so beyond just shifts in ourattention, how does our social
media habits impact us? You know, in a wider sense, I
(27:16):
guess, do we get affected differently by engaging and
spending so much time on social as opposed to anything else
digital? Yeah, look, I, I think there has
been some very legitimate and very large concerns around
social media use and some of themental health impacts.
Interestingly, I, you know, I've, I've gradually come to the
(27:37):
conclusion that a lot of them are, you know, quite overstated.
And I think it's been in part because of the way it has been
measured in the past, has been people's kind of guesses of how
much they're using, which largely seems to be, you know,
doesn't overlap much with how much they actually use.
(27:59):
So what what's been measured is how concerned people are of
their social media use, which quite logically is related to
how concerned and anxious they are about the world more
broadly. So you've gotten these sort of
correlations between people's concern over social media use
and concern, you know, more broadly.
So, and it's almost led to this conclusion.
Well, social media use is associated with anxiety and
(28:20):
depression and these other sortsof factors.
Whereas when we actually measurethese things using mobile phone
data or other sorts of things, these are really, really low
associations and often they're just non existent.
We just simply don't find them when we measure them in the
other ways. Now with that said, I think what
does seem to come out is that itdepends.
(28:41):
So you know, as with a lot of things, I think you can engage
with things in ways that are immensely reaching.
You know, we can connect with networks of people who have very
similar shared and overlapping interests and and build each
other's capacities and share knowledge in ways that just was
not possible previously. Now the flip side of that, I
(29:05):
think if people have a tendency to to worry and, and I often
recall as an example, remember that at the start of COVID,
where ever there was so much uncertainty out there and
everyone was sort of scanning information constantly trying to
figure out, you know, how does this affect?
How fast is it spreading? Is this in our country?
(29:26):
You know who who's being affected by it?
If someone's sort of habitually concerned about lots of
different things in their world and they have that tendency to
engage with social media in thatway where they're just on the
lookout for threatening or negative stuff.
That's really has the potential to skew their perception of the
world in ways because as, as we know, these things don't just
(29:46):
randomly select information, they feed you more of what you
are potentially engaging with and interested with.
So I think in those sorts of contexts and, and we know of
other examples of, well, so particularly people with eating
weight and shape concerns, you know, seeing Reels full of, you
know, Instagram influences with flawless bodies probably isn't
(30:07):
going to be something that's, yeah, going to be particularly
helpful. So I, I think the consensus that
a lot of researchers are beginning to move towards or be
it, you know, gradually is that social media use isn't a single
thing necessarily. And it really does depend on the
way in which it's engaged with in terms of what its potential
consequences might be on mental health.
(30:29):
I know we've touched on it a little bit, but you know, in the
context of our emotions, even our identities or how we relate
to each other, is there any impact on on the way that I
guess we navigate the digital world crossing over into the way
real life or they seem like verydifferent ways of being?
Yeah. Look, I think there is quite a
bit of, you know, research in that space and particularly
(30:51):
within the, you know, social psychology field more that has
looked at the, the sort of way in which sort of online social
environments potentially overlapwith, you know, our, our
extended social groups and, and the like.
And there has been bits of research sort of suggested that
we are perhaps, you know, tending towards a larger number
(31:12):
of more casual engagements with people online as opposed to a
smaller number of really high quality intimate friendship
relationships. And and I think there's sort of
variations in that expression aswell.
So sometimes people who have very active online presences are
perhaps more likely to have a very large number of, you know,
(31:36):
very wide social network. But in terms of that really
close, high quality friendship groups, that might be
comparatively lacking. But of course, there's huge
variation in that, you know, across people generally.
But I have seen a little bit of research that suggests some of
those effects. Yeah.
When it comes to attention and how much we're kind of feeling
(31:58):
like we're losing it when we're online and engaging with things.
You know, I, I was once speakingto a young guy, I think he was
about 21 years old, and he was telling me how his attention
span was, was shot these days. But then he explained to me that
while he would be studying for university exams, he would have
the notes on one screen and be watching a movie through
(32:20):
headphones, you know, and, and with his phone next to it.
And, and then that's what made me think about this in, in the
1st place. It sounds like the attention
span is maybe not sure, it's kind of a a different way of of
taking in information because I personally don't think I could
handle that. But if someone that is claiming
that they're worried that their attention span is getting hurt
(32:43):
through, you know, consumption of the digital world and online
stuff, is there any strategies they can employ to try and
reclaim their focus? Or is it simply a matter of just
just paying attention to something else?
I think it's a it's a fascinating example that you
were sort of identifying there that kind of, you know, on the
(33:04):
one hand is it is it in some ways almost a superpower that
you've got this content kind of going in the background, you're
still being able to engage, but it's interesting.
It's almost, you know, that thatan extended example perhaps of
that having a light bit of musicin the background that just kind
of dampens our tendency to switch away.
I guess if you're so used to a really high level of stimulus
(33:26):
operating, perhaps you're almostdampening that, that tendency to
switch away by by turning up thevolume on the, on the
information that's in the background potentially.
And it's, yeah, it is, it is really interesting that.
But I the thing that I'd be curious about, and you know, I'm
almost sort of, you know, thinking about the, the next
research project as you're talking about it.
Is that the possibility? I'd, I'd really be interested to
(33:49):
find out whether or not someone who has that tendency would
perform better, say on a, on a memory task or something when
they do have that background information versus when they're
just in a, in a room with no distractions and they're sort of
taking that, that information in.
And that might be a bit more of a kind kind of a habit type type
thing. So it would be really
(34:09):
interesting to kind of, you know, investigate it from that
perspective. But I think to to the question
of are there things that we can do to kind of maintain or or
retain that high level of focus when we need it to be there?
Absolutely. And it's kind of coming back to
that we get better at what we practise, I guess is, is part of
(34:31):
it. So to the, the extent that we
can kind of practise some of those mindful tasks a bit or in
different contexts. And it doesn't have to be, you
know, it can be these little 5 minute app type things that are,
you know, helpful for those sorts of things, but all sorts
of just minimal little tasks. You know, you've probably caught
yourself sitting there eating, you know, a sandwich, listening
(34:52):
to music and scrolling on your phone all at the same time.
Just that sort of bombardment ofstimuli, thinking about just
identifying single tasks and going, no, I'm just going to do
that. Beyond that though, I think
actually being a bit more deliberate when we are taking on
tasks that we know needs that focus, rather than treating them
as things that we can switch into and out of is probably
(35:15):
something that's quite useful aswell.
Because as we're saying, you switch from one thing to another
thing to another thing. Right now I need high intensity
focus. It's almost like, all right,
well, what what's going to be ideal in terms of being able to
do that? Because you know, the problem
with phones is I remember when procrastinating, I would be
cleaning the coffee machine and doing all these sorts of things
there. Phones are such rewarding and,
(35:37):
and really low level procrastination.
You don't have to do much to kind of get a bit of a kick out
of them and they're right there.So I think moving a device far
away from you while you are needing to do that, you know,
probably a lot of people are used to working with one or two
or three screens these days as well, can have some efficiencies
with it. But at the same time you're
getting more stimulus there and you have that capacity to switch
(35:59):
a bit more. So reducing that down and then
going, all right, do I need to be online for the next half an
hour while I'm reading this thing or doing whatever else it
is. So again, it's kind of like,
well, when you do just get that little, this is boring, I'd
really like to just switch to myphone.
Your phone's not there. OK, I guess I'll keep going with
this sort of thing or just just look up this unrelated thing
(36:22):
that I'm looking to, oh, the internet's not OK, OK, that's
why I'm focusing on. So it just increases the
threshold that it takes you to actually step away from that
task and almost guides you back a little bit.
So I think some of those sorts of techniques can be sort of
very helpful and also sometimes just accountability.
So I think when you can have a situation where you're like,
(36:46):
right, I need to do this within this next half hour and you tell
someone else then that who's in turn is going to be accountable
for you for what? For whatever they're doing.
These sorts of things can help you kind of push through some of
that as well. So I think, you know, sounds
from everything that we've, we've gone over today, there's
not really any real consensus or, or evidence that the
(37:08):
Internet has permanently alteredour, our attention spans or the
ability to focus. And it sounds like it's more
environmental. And if the time is spent kind of
crafting that environment that you know, is going to work best
for you, whether, you know, as we, as we touched on earlier, it
is working from home and not having those distractions or,
you know, putting in some headphones with a bit of white
(37:30):
noise. It sounds like that's actually
the key factor in in what is going to help people
concentrate. Not so much, you know, claiming
that the Internet has ruined their attention spans.
Is that correct? Yeah.
Look, and I think that's the immensely reassuring thing that
has sort of happened from what I've kind of systematically, you
know, investigated through the literature reviews showing these
(37:52):
abilities seem to be largely intact.
We have not permanently compromised our our attention or
our cognitive capabilities in ways that aren't retrievable.
What we have changed and changedpretty massively are our our
attention related habits. So how much we tend to do these
things and that sort of reclaiming of attention then
(38:13):
involves, all right, well, how do I change these habits?
How do I set things up so that Ican create an environment where
I'm more likely to be able to immerse myself in in the things
that are going to be helpful in that context?
Sometimes, yeah. But no, very reassuring that we
we haven't busted our brains fundamentally and permanently.
So that's very good to know for anybody that is a bit concerned
about that. What can people you know?
(38:35):
How can they follow you to with what you're up to?
Yeah, sure. So I guess I'm on Blue Sky and
LinkedIn a little bit and post bits and pieces of the research
that we put out in in our labs. We are, I guess I've been, I'm
part of a, a research project here in WA with Healthway
looking at how young LGBTQ plus people are, you know, using
(38:57):
social media and the like in ways that can be really
enhancing for their mental health.
So recognising that this is kindof something that's, you know,
in endemic amongst young people and can be used for potential
great benefit, but also beyond that, you know, really
interested in how this can be shaping mental health, both for
(39:18):
better and for worse sometimes. And because it is such a, a
changing landscaping environment, there's always, you
know, sort of new and interesting things out there to,
for us to be sort of understanding and what sort of
impact it's having on, on both our our emotions and how we, we
process the world and our cognitive capability.
So it's something that will kindof, you know, keep chipping away
(39:39):
at as, as they come up. And but yeah, no, please, by all
means have a follow. And we tend to put research out
as as we find it. Thank you so much for joining us
today, Patrick. That was great.
Been a great pleasure Gareth, thanks for having me.
For more info on what we've discussed today, check out the
show notes. If you enjoyed this one, you can
subscribe to Ruined by the Internet on your favourite
(40:00):
podcast app and help spread the word by sharing this episode or
leaving a review. I'm Gareth King, see you next
time.
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