Causes and Effects of the Shortening of Attention Span Among the Public by Clara Long before, when there wasn’t technology and the act of getting orders so quickly, people could pay attention on one activity for a long time. For example, my dad can pay attention on his work way better when he’s free from all the quick serving of technology. Every day, there are new updates in technology and we are living in a society where if on dilemma occurs in one part of the world, the opposite side of the Earth will also get to know in less than a minute. These days, Koreans expect everything faster, like they want their delivery in less than two days and they get so frustrated if the WiFi doesn’t work or is slow. That’s why Korea have the fastest and best WiFi in the World. Consequently, people these days have a hard time focusing on a task. The attention span of people are getting shorter because of the new world’s technology and others causes. Moreover, there are a lot of negative effects to the shortening attention span of people in the society of 2014.
Multitasking is called a skill, but it can damage your attention span and your ability to put effort into a task. People multitasking by reading and texting at the same time, or any other combination possible. For example they could be texting, reading, and writing an essay. I have been texting and reading at the same time and it’s not really comfortable. I tended to forget what the story was about and my hands just automatically turned the pages. A lot of people multitask these days because they think that it will make them finish a task earlier. They might think that since I’m doing two things at once, it will take twice as little as when you do one task then the other. Even though it might be a little quicker,

I find myself having a hard time concentrating on one task. I often have to go back because I forget what I’m doing while multitasking. The University of Sussex researchers proved that multitasking was a bad choice by brain scans. They found out that “they had less grey matter in a region called the anterior cingulate cortex”. Multitasking might solve some problems, but it actually causes you to shorten your attention span.
As I said before, technology has taken over the world. We, now rely on technology and we in fact, rely too much. Every time, there’s a big even on the opposite side of the earth, we can still find out by technology less than five minutes. It’s really cool, but it is all because of the people’s lack of patience. Due to the flying technology speed, people’s attention span gets shorten. The attention span used to be 12 minutes, while now its 5 minutes. It is about two times less than before. When doing a certain task, we are constantly looking at our Gmail, Instagram, Twitter and etc. We are desired to check for the notifications and just can’t pay attention for studying or doing a special task. A study found that a one second delay in page load time can result in 11% fewer page views, 16% decreased customer satisfaction and 7% lost conversions. This is a really cool thing how people can’t pay attention. Not only does the people’s attention span decrease, the patience level of people are also decreasing. It is a really depressing thought how now, people can’t pay attention on a task or a long time. Shortening attention span will make people not be able to finish their assignments. Before doing an half an hour of homework, people will get hooked off to another assignment. They might be texting or IMing their friends in while doing about fifteen minutes of studying. Therefore, they won’t be able to finish their homework or any assignments in school. For example, I can’t concentrate a lot when I have my phone next to me and feel the urge to stop and look at my notifications. I can’t pay attention on my

homework for a long time because of technology and it is a pretty hard thing to do.
The shortening attention span of people are disturbing themselves because of how they can’t finish their assignments. It a serious matter; of how one can’t stay on the same task for 5 minutes. It’s a wonder how technology and multitasking changed our lives of on going tasks. We take a break after five minutes of studying and call it “done”