On Feb. 9, 2025 Sahin Ahmed from Medium wrote an article on the diminishing attention span of the average person. He found that the average person’s attention span has been reduced to 8.25 seconds. 8.25 seconds is about the amount of time it took you to read those two sentences. Are you still paying attention?
Jared Bart ‘27 believes there is a decline in students’ attention spans everywhere due to social media’s fast serotonin boosts. He has experienced becoming more distracted in classes and notices his friends not being able to pay attention during class.
“I feel like the short form content results in wanting gratification and a serotonin boost,” Bart said. “The quicker and the faster you receive the stimulation, the faster you can be happy. We want to get gratification faster and faster, and it becomes harder to focus on things that may take a little bit more time.”
Middle school librarian and library director Jennifer Lutzky also believes that social media has changed the way our brains work. Lutzky has observed that students’ attention spans have begun to slightly decline, and she herself experiences this decline when she reads. She believes that social media and COVID are the biggest culprits of people’s attention spans declining.
“Everybody’s used to TikTok, reels or stories, and they’re 20 seconds long,” Lutzky said. “You’re used to boom, boom, boom [with short videos] and then I think the COVID pandemic also made everybody a little more anxious overall. So even I, who loves to read, read for shorter periods of time.”
Cassandra Cando, high school director of educational support services, helps high school students who need in-school support with learning differences. She notices a general decline of attention span within the student body and in the students she meets. Cando finds the effects of a shorter attention span reflected in the Campbell Hall community.
“It’s such a broad student body of [different types of] learners and you hear some teachers, especially in CHAI [classes], going [CHAI classes are] not the same’ or even in an at level [regular] class,” Cando said. “Maybe the pace has to slow down a little bit, but we have to address our students’ needs and our student body and adapt to it.”
Lutzky also finds that shorter attention spans affect student’s mindset and can not only affect school performance, but worsen how they feel about themselves. She notices that students believe they do not have the attention span to even read a book.
“If they tried [to read a book], and they just set a goal to read for five minutes and then come back and read five more minutes, they would do better than they think they will,” Lutzky said. “So I think it’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy where they think they can’t read a book, so then they don’t try and then they don’t read a book.”
Agreeing with Cando on the school’s support system, Lutzky sees the light at the end of the tunnel. Lutzky says there will always be kids who need extra support and there is nothing wrong about it. She finds that there is hope for students who need it and short attention spans are not permanent.
“The trend toward shorter attention spans has intensified, but I don’t think it’s irreversible,” Lutzky said. “I think even though students have been kind of trained to want things in short, super interesting bursts, students can definitely decide to engage with a book, and do things at a slower pace. You just have to be patient with yourself.”