Psychology
How to improve attention span, according to the research
Short answer
There's no single attention span to measure, and the 8-second goldfish figure has no research behind it. Researchers measure attention on a given task, and lab and field studies point to a few changes worth testing on yourself: fewer notifications, fewer switches between tasks, and breaks on a schedule.
The most quoted figure for the average attention span, 8 seconds, came from a 2015 marketing report that credited a statistics website, and nobody has found a study behind it. The figure that does come from a study is 47 seconds. It counts something narrower: how long office workers kept one window in front of them before switching to another.
What the 47 seconds measures
In 2016 Gloria Mark of the University of California, Irvine, with colleagues from Microsoft Research and MIT, logged the computers of 40 office workers at one large US tech company for about 12 working days. Software recorded which window was in the foreground. Dividing each day’s computer time by the number of switches gave a “focus duration” for each person: a mean of 47 seconds, and a median of about 40.
The workers switched between applications a median of 261 times a day, and within them (between documents or websites) a median of 112 times. Their focus also moved with the software. It averaged about 62 seconds in email and 64 in programs such as Word and Excel, against about 42 in chat and calling apps such as Skype.
So 47 seconds describes window switching at work, which the authors use as a stand-in for attention during computer work. It isn’t a limit on how long a human brain can attend to something.
Two other results are worth knowing. Shorter focus went with lower self-rated productivity at the end of the day, and people who scored higher on neuroticism (a personality trait marked by anxiety) had shorter focus. The study covered one workplace, and the authors say the results generalize only to similar high-tech workplaces with educated workers.
A Scroll lesson takes 32 to 50 seconds to read (median 44), about the length of one of those screen visits. We noticed the coincidence. We make no claim that reading one does anything for attention.
Where the 8-second goldfish claim came from
In 2015 a Microsoft Canada report on consumer attention claimed that the average human attention span had fallen from 12 seconds around 2000 to 8, one second less than a goldfish’s 9. Microsoft had surveyed 2,000 Canadians and recorded brain activity from 112 others, but the attention-span numbers didn’t come from that work.
When the Wall Street Journal traced them in 2017, the report turned out to credit a website called Statistic Brain. A senior researcher at the US National Library of Medicine, one of the website’s listed sources, found no reference to the figures, and the Associated Press, also listed, couldn’t find an article with them. Statistic Brain didn’t respond. We haven’t read the Microsoft report itself, so this account rests on the press coverage.
The researchers the Journal spoke to said basic attention hasn’t changed. Edward Vogel of the University of Chicago said his measurements of college students over 20 years had been stable across decades. Michael Posner, known for mapping the brain networks behind attention, said there was no real evidence of a change since the late 1800s.
There’s also no single span to measure. Even within Mark’s data, the figure moved by about 20 seconds depending on the program, from chat apps to Word and Excel.
What the short-video research found
Nguyen and colleagues’ 2025 meta-analysis, published in Psychological Bulletin, pooled 71 studies with 98,299 participants. Heavier short-form video use was associated with weaker attention (r of minus 0.38) and weaker inhibitory control, the ability to hold back an automatic response (r of minus 0.41). The pattern held for young people and adults, and across platforms. Few of the studies measured memory or reasoning.
These are correlations, and correlations can’t show which way the effect runs. Short videos could wear down attention; people who already find it hard to concentrate could choose short videos; or something else, such as stress, could drive both. A correlation of 0.38 also means the two measures share about 14% of their variation, so most of the difference between people lies elsewhere.
One experiment adds a short-term result. In a 2023 lab study of 60 people, Francesco Chiossi and colleagues compared TikTok, Twitter, YouTube and no activity, and found that the TikTok condition made people worse at remembering to carry out something they’d planned. It was a single lab session with a small sample, and the outcome was prospective memory (remembering to act on a plan later).
So the research on attention after TikTok shows a consistent link and one small experiment with a short-term effect on a related skill. Neither tested whether cutting back changes anything. If the habit you want to change is opening a feed without deciding to, the guide on how to stop doomscrolling deals with that directly.
Changes that studies of attention support
Each study below changed one condition around a task and measured what happened, usually over hours or a few weeks. They measured task performance, mood or how attentive people felt. None measured a lasting change in a person’s attention, so treat them as things to test on yourself.
Batch your notifications
In a lab experiment by Stothart, Mitchum and Yehnert (2015), notifications alone disrupted performance on an attention-demanding task, even though participants didn’t pick up their phones. The authors judged the disruption comparable in size to the effect of using a phone for calls or texts.
Fitz and colleagues (2019) tested batching in a field experiment with 237 people. People whose notifications came in three batches a day reported feeling more attentive, in a better mood and more in control of their phones, with lower stress, compared with people who got them as usual. People who got no notifications at all saw few of those benefits and reported more anxiety and fear of missing out.
Most phones let you mute notifications by app or by time of day. Three batches a day is the version that was tested; turning everything off didn’t do better in that study.
Switch less often, and leave a cue when you do
Switching costs time. In four experiments, Rubinstein, Meyer and Evans (2001) had people alternate between tasks such as classifying shapes by different rules or doing different kinds of arithmetic. Switching took longer than repeating a task, the cost grew with the complexity of the rules, and it shrank when a cue showed which task came next.
In Mark’s workplace data, people with shorter focus also rated their days as less productive. The everyday version we’d suggest is to finish a step before opening another window, and when you do switch, to leave a one-line note of where you stopped. The note is our extrapolation from the cueing result; nobody tested it.
The app’s lesson on managing attention, which cites Mark’s 2023 book Attention Span, comes at the same problem from the workplace side.
Managing Attention, Not Just Time
Knowledge work productivity is primarily an attention problem, not a time problem. Eight distracted hours rarely outperform four focused ones. Digital environments are engineered to capture and fragment attention. Protecting attention requires proactive design: notification settings, physical environment, scheduled deep work blocks, and explicit norms about response times. Attention management is the foundational productivity skill of the digital age.
Source Mark, G. (2023). Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance.
Quick quiz
A knowledge worker with 8 hours available but constant notification interruptions vs. one with 4 uninterrupted hours. Who is likely more productive?
Take breaks on a schedule
Biwer and colleagues (2023) compared three ways of studying among 87 students at a Dutch university: Pomodoro-style blocks (24 minutes of study, then a 6-minute break), shorter blocks (12 minutes, then 3), and breaks whenever the students chose. Students who chose their own breaks studied and rested for longer stretches. They also reported more fatigue and distraction, and less concentration and motivation. All three groups completed the same amount of work with similar effort, and the scheduled groups did it in less time.
A brief change of goal can also hold off the usual slide on long, repetitive tasks. In Ariga and Lleras’s 2011 study, people doing a long visual monitoring task got steadily worse over time when they recalled some digits they were holding in memory only at the end. Asked to recall the digits now and then during the task, they showed no decline.
The Pomodoro Technique comes from Francesco Cirillo, who created it in the 1980s and named it after a tomato-shaped kitchen timer. Its best-known 25-minute block is close to the 24 minutes Biwer’s students used.
Measure before and after
You can check this on yourself. The attention span test is a four-minute task from attention research: you press for every number except one, and it records how often you slip and how much your response times vary. Take it on an ordinary day, change one thing for a week, and take it again at the same time of day.
Drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources listed on October 17, 2026.