How long is your attention span?

Now that I have two dogs, one is 14 and one is 4.5 months I have noticed a dramatic difference in their attention spans. Something that can entertain my elderly dog for hours, is just a momentary distraction for my young puppy. When I spend time training Sophie, my puppy, it is just in small increments of time because she loses her focus. I decided to do some research about the attention spans of humans, since we live in such an impatient world. I found some very disconcerting and shocking statistics.

Attention spans have shrunk 50% in the past decade. Wow. For example, in 1998 it was 12 minutes in 2008, just 5 minutes.

They say stress and decision overload are the major culprits in the loss of attention spans. I agree to a point but I believe the greatest distraction people face today is social media. This technology has definitely began to run people’s lives.

500,000 people join Twitter everyday

12 million Twitter users follow 64 or more Twitter accounts and 1.5 million follow over 500 accounts

People spend 700 billion minutes on Facebook every month

Facebook users install 20 million apps everyday

There are many aspects of our lives being affected by the extreme Internet and social media use. These include, multi tasking skills, social interactions, and ability to focus.

There is an alarming increase in impatience. This generation expects everything instantly and the Internet will do exactly that!

Younger people have shorter attention spans than the elderly.

People check their email on their phones and average of 30 times an hour, that’s every 1.5 minutes!

Social media/Internet addition is very real. When students were asked to give up media for 24 hours, they experienced the following symptoms:

Phantom phone vibrations

Reaching for a phone that wasn’t there

Fidgeting and restlessness

I was very disturbed after I read all the statistics. We have literally replaced our relationships with a phone or computer. I am guilty of texting rather than talking on the phone because of the control it gives me. If my puppy is being distracting while I’m on the phone, I can remedy the situation by texting.

I remember when I was growing up we didn’t have cell phones or computers and no Internet. It was a very different world. We actually had to think! We couldn’t get answers with the click of a button we had to physically open a book or go through microfilm at the library.

I’m grateful for the versatility and speed of information the Internet has brought us, but at the same time it is robbing us of necessary skills. It has made us become a very impatient group of people.

Through all of this technology overload it has become harder to pray and seek the Lord. He is certainly not affected by the newest and greatest technology man has to offer but rather is seeking those who will still take that precious time to pray. There is no such thing as speed prayer and impatience is not an attribute that comes from God. We know that the signs are all around us of the end of time as we know it and we are at the threshold of eternity. Be cautious of the time spent on social media and consider what it is producing in your life. The time spent in prayer and working for the Lord will produce an amazing focus in your life and eternal rewards!