BEHV3004 Advanced Research Methods

In human psychology, attention span is a very important concept. Attention span describes the amount of time spent for concentrating on a specific task before getting distracted from it. Distraction can occur when the attention is diverted to some other sensation and activities. Attention span is important for performing the concentrative tasks (Kies 2018). For example, study can be considered, where a high amount of concentration is required. In the current aspect, social media is highly associated with the attention span of humans. Here, I would like to identify how social media affects the modern attention span of humans.

Many researchers have revealed that average human attention span is decreasing with time. In 2000 the average attention span of humans was 12 second, but in 2013 it dropped below 8 second, which shows how the attention span is decreasing with time (Shensa et al. 2018). One very important question is why is this happening? There should be some reason that is causing the decreasing attention span in this modern era. Many believe that technology is playing a big role, which resulted in shortened attention span among humans. In this modern era of technology, every information is available at our fingertips. Accessing any news or information is not a very hard task anymore, and we are always connected with our family and friends using the instant messaging and social media platform (Primack and Escobar-Viera 2017). This type of technology is definitely having many advantages for our daily lives, but many people also believe that social media is one of the main reasons behind this decreased attention span. So, is it really true? Let’s just discover it with some important understanding.

So, what is the problem with social media? There are many theories that have been presented, which have described the relation between social media and modern attention span. From different theories it has been identified that there is a mechanism, which is driving casual interaction between the deficit in attention and media multitasking. Many have also argued that social media is having a very important risk of infantilizing the human mind. It has been identified that the development of the human brain in this world of fast and transient action may accustom for operating in short time scales (Balan, Jacintos and Montemayor 2020). Due to this reason, for the specific tasks where attention is required for a long time, there may be deficient attention.

Many believe that shortening of attention span will not have any major impact on the children, but again is that really true? The main logic that is given behind this statement is that in the modern era every type of information is available and can be accessed easily. So, the decreased attention span will not have any major impact. Decreased attention span will not show its impact on immediate basis, but it can be observed in the later development stage of the children (Zhao et al. 2018). It has been identified that decreased attention span can significantly reduce the mathematical and reading skill of children. Therefore, decreasing attention span is really an important concern.

The main issue with social media platforms is that they are developed in a specific way, which will keep you hooked up for as long as possible. As more people will spend more time in the social media platform, it will generate money for them. So, definitely they want people to spend more time on their platform. Most of the social media platform works on the freemium model and for that it highly attracts most of the users (Gómez, Lopez and Molina 2019). To hook up any user as long as possible, the social media stimulates the attention of the user as long as possible and as much as possible. It always tries to keep the user entertained, so that the user never leaves the platform. This directly impacts the human brain. While the social media platform continuously stimulates the human brain for a long amount of time, it can have some adverse effect on the brain (Nesi 2020). To become more attentive regarding any task or situation, it is crucial to enter the subconscious mind, but the social media platform never allows it as the human mind is already overstimulated. In this way, it definitely decreases the average attention span of humans.

Social media not only hooks up a user, but it also provides a feeling of pleasure to the users. The human brain releases dopamine when it achieves some pleasure from the external environment. This dopamine is also known as the feel good drug. This dopamine chemical always instructs the human brain to perform the activities again and again which gives pleasure (Berke 2018). Regarding this dopamine, it has been identified that social media experiences provide high dopamine state, where the real life experiences creates a low dopamine state compared with the social media experience. In this way, the human brain becomes highly focused on social media and ignores the real life scenario to achieve the high dopamine state. Now, if the human brain is not exposed to the real life scenario for a long time and always tries to ignore it, then the brain will never be able to achieve the higher level of attention span. Therefore, in this way again the social media platform reduces the attention span of the humans.

Engagement factor is also important to increase the attention span among humans. People will not be attentive towards some situation if they are not directly engaged with the situation. Social media allows humans to skip this engagement factor. By using social media platforms, users can develop a basic level of engagement among different peoples, but it will never provide an active engagement (Zhuravskaya, Petrova and Enikolopov 2020). For example, users can interact with each other in the social media platform by using the instant messaging application. People will receive messages and after receiving the message they can decide whether they should reply or not. In case of an active engagement or face to face engagement, the scenario is completely different. In case of face to face engagement people will definitely provide some reply regarding the conversation, and for that instance of time, they will be attentive towards the conversion process. Therefore, it again shows the importance of active conversation for improving the attention span, and how social media is decreasing this attention span by providing a virtual platform of engagement to the users.

References:

Balan, A.K., Jacintos, A.R. and Montemayor, T., 2020. The Influence of Online Learning towards the Attention Span and Motivation of College Students.

Berke, J.D., 2018. What does dopamine mean?. Nature neuroscience, 21(6), pp.787-793.

Gómez, M., Lopez, C. and Molina, A., 2019. An integrated model of social media brand engagement. Computers in Human Behavior, 96, pp.196-206.

Kies, S.C., 2018. Social media impact on attention span. Journal of Management & Engineering Integration, 11(1), pp.20-27.

Nesi, J., 2020. The impact of social media on youth mental health: challenges and opportunities. North Carolina medical journal, 81(2), pp.116-121.

Primack, B.A. and Escobar-Viera, C.G., 2017. Social media as it interfaces with psychosocial development and mental illness in transitional age youth. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics, 26(2), pp.217-233.

Shensa, A., Sidani, J.E., Dew, M.A., Escobar-Viera, C.G. and Primack, B.A., 2018. Social media use and depression and anxiety symptoms: A cluster analysis. American journal of health behavior, 42(2), pp.116-128.

Zhao, J., Liu, M., Liu, H. and Huang, C., 2018. The visual attention span deficit in Chinese children with reading fluency difficulty. Research in developmental disabilities, 73, pp.76-86.

Zhuravskaya, E., Petrova, M. and Enikolopov, R., 2020. Political effects of the internet and social media. Annual Review of Economics, 12, pp.415-438.

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