Information overload: Is all this technology bad for your brain? 

Ping, ding, ring — these are just some of the many interruptions in our working day. We may regard all this switching back and forth between tasks as multitasking, but experts say it contributes to stress and reduces productivity

Pic: iStock

OUR brains are focusing machines. Right now, they are being bombarded with information. Our eyes are sending them the equivalent of 10 million bits (or binary digits) of data every second. 

There’s a constant flow of information from the sound waves that hit our ears. And, according to a 2020 study, we have more than 6,000 thoughts daily.

That’s a lot to filter out if we want to get anything done. The brain has managed this successfully for millennia — until now, say those who argue that modern technology is undermining our powers of concentration. Our email inboxes; the ping, ping, ping of notifications from WhatsApp and Instagram, and the incessant Slack, MS Teams, and Zoom alerts are making so many demands on our attention they may be affecting our brain’s ability to focus.

Dr Gloria Mark has been investigating the impact of technology for 20 years. She is a cognitive psychologist, professor of informatics at the University of California, and author of Attention Span: Finding Focus for a Fulfilling Life.

She carried out the first of her ongoing studies of attention span in 2004. “We logged how long office workers spent on any one activity on their computer before switching to another,” she says. “In 2004, they spent two-and-a-half minutes. Since then, that has dropped to 47 seconds.”

Mark blames the distracting nature of modern technology for this dramatic fall. “More sources of interruption have appeared in the past 20 years,” she says. “Facebook was founded in 2004 and the other social media giants followed. Then the huge source of distraction that is the iPhone came along in 2007. It’s no wonder attention spans have shortened.”

However, she doesn’t believe this is the full story. “We are social beings who seek social rewards,” she says. “That’s what compels us to check our emails and social media, and it’s what drives us to try to engage with other people online.

“Our personality has a role to play in maintaining our attention span too. Some people are born with good self-regulation — they aren’t easily distracted, and when they are, they can get back on track. Others find that harder.”

Multitasking is a myth

Dr Eoin Whelan is a lecturer at NUI Galway whose research explores the effects of modern technology on people’s behaviour. He agrees that there are multiple reasons for our flitting focus.

“Our capacity to pay attention is the same as it was 100 years ago, we’re just inundated with more distractions,” he says. “We also want to be distracted. We often choose to check emails rather than knuckling down to work. Work is cognitively demanding and it’s natural to want to avoid it. So when we hear an email arrive, the shot of dopamine that might come from opening it can seem irresistible.”

Neuroscientist Dr Ian Robertson, professor of psychology at Trinity College Dublin, believes digital technology uses our brains against us.

“Our brains preferentially process novelty, emotion, and surprise over routine and modern technology harnesses this preference to control our attention,” he says. “It’s a problem.”

It’s a problem because all brain systems require maintenance. “Use it or lose it,” says Robertson. “If we are constantly distracted by alerts or posts, then by definition, the duration of our attention on any single task is much reduced. As a result, our brain’s ability to sustain its attention on boring single tasks is reduced too.”

We can become so accustomed to our focus being interrupted that we eventually start doing it to ourselves.

Another of Mark’s studies found that office workers checked their emails an average of 77 times daily. These checks were triggered by an alert 59% of the time but were not in 41% of the time. Workers deliberately chose the distraction.

Some of us tell ourselves we’re not being distracted when we keep one eye on our inbox and the other on the task at hand, calling it multitasking.

This is a myth, says Robertson. “When you think you’re multitasking, what your brain is actually doing is switching back and forth between different tasks. This takes a lot of metabolic energy and contributes to stress.”

It can even have a negative effect on productivity. In a 2005 study, Mark showed that when officer workers’ focus was interrupted by a phone call or email, they needed an average of 25 minutes to redirect their attention to their original task. “Multitasking isn’t the effective use of time it’s billed as,” she says.

We make more mistakes when we try to multitask too. “We only have a certain amount of processing ability and if we make too many demands on our attention, we can end up forgetting things or not paying attention to important aspects,” says Dr Dean McDonnell, a psychologist and council member of the Psychological Society of Ireland. “If we are constantly stretched, that elastic will eventually snap at some stage. We’ve all seen the road safety ads where people are on their phone while driving — they show us how impossible it is to focus on two things at once.”

A 2006 University of California study found that learning information while multitasking caused that information to be stored in the wrong part of the brain, making it more difficult to retrieve.

In 2012, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology identified a neural circuit that helps the brain create long-lasting memories and proved that circuit worked more effectively when the brain was actively paying attention to what it was looking at.

These studies may explain why students who multitask while doing schoolwork have been found to understand and retain less information.

In an even more alarming finding, a 2014 study found that our wayward attention may even be altering the structure of our brains. People who frequently used several media devices at once had lower grey-matter density in the anterior cingulate cortex, an area of the brain responsible for cognitive and emotional control functions, compared to those who used just one device occasionally.

A life of endless distraction?

Robertson fears we are heading towards a life of endless distraction. With Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse on the horizon, for example, he thinks AI might take more and more of our attention. “The effort to resist this will be so great that only a minority of people will go to the effort of learning to control their attention,” he predicts.

Whelan worries about the younger generation. “Their brains are not fully formed and their self-control isn’t fully activated which means they are more easily distracted,” he says. “If they grow up using this technology and constantly switching focus, they may become conditioned and may not be able to manage the challenges of the digital world later in life.”

Mark is less pessimistic. “We may continue to have shorter attention spans to a point but I think we will eventually correct course,” she says.

She believes this correction will come in a variety of ways. “We’re still in the infancy of the digital age,” she says. “As we develop more experience and understanding, we’ll introduce media literacy programmes; training kids in good practice. Parents will understand they need to put limits on screen time so that kids don’t grow up believing it’s normal to spend eight hours on a screen.”

Technology could change too. “We need to include psychologists in its design so that it improves our wellbeing and doesn’t cause us stress,” she says.

Until that happens, it’s up to us to try to maintain our focus. McDonnell does this by keeping distractions at bay. “When I want to concentrate, I minimise temptations,” he says. “I open one screen on my computer and that’s it. I put my phone away and I get to work.”

He also tries to balance his time between being online and off. “If I have a busy day on the computer, I deliberately spend my evening away from screens out in the garden or reading a book,” he says.

Whelan believes we can improve our focus with practice. “It’s like a muscle; the more it’s used, the better it gets,” he says. “So put your phone away and direct your attention on a task. Start with 10 minutes and build from there.”

Robertson recommends taking short breaks to allow our brains to rest and recover. “My tip is to take a long slow breath — count to four as you breathe in and to six as you breathe out — 20 to 30 times per day, or every time we switch task,” he says.

Mark agrees that downtime is vital. “They replenish our minds,” she says. “Even if we’re good at concentrating, we need to take breaks. You can’t have long extended periods of focus without getting exhausted in the same way you can’t lift weights for too long without hurting your body. The best break of all is to move around, go outside and be in nature. That gets you out of your mind, into your body and away from stress.”

She also recommends working with your natural circadian rhythm, “recognising whether you work best early or later in the day”.

“By identifying your peaks and troughs, you can design your workday around them... There are the times when I’ve got the capacity to do work that requires creativity or concentration,” she says. “I don’t waste them on email. I do my email and other admin during my downtime in the troughs.”

Mark’s final tip is to cultivate a more mindful approach to technology. “Often, our behaviours are automatic,” she says. “We grab our phones or open social media without really thinking about it. But if we make these actions more conscious, we can change them if we want.”

And she practices what she preaches. “When I have the urge to check social media, I ask myself why,” she says. “Usually, it’s because I’m bored or procrastinating. If it’s boredom, I ask myself what I can do to alleviate it. If it’s procrastination, I tell myself I have to get the work done so may as well start. This type of awareness can help us all increase our self-regulation and improve our focus.”

Mind over emails

What’s the most distracting form of modern technology? Gloria Mark believes it may be email. Hearing the high-pitched tone that signals the arrival of a new mail in our inboxes usually leads to workers jettisoning the task at hand to check just what that email might be.

What we may not realise is the negative effect this may be having on us. In 2016, a study carried out by Mark found a direct correlation between email and higher stress.

In the study, heart rate monitors were attached to computer users in a suburban office setting while software sensors detected how often they switched windows. Participants who checked their emails changed screens twice as often and were in a steady state of high stress, accompanied by a constant high heart rate. Participants who had email removed from their computers for five days experienced more natural variable heart rates.

“When email was removed from workers’ lives, they multitasked less and experienced less stress,” says Mark.

They also appeared to be better able to stay on task. Those with email switched windows an average of 37 times per hour while those without email changed 18 times per hour, about half as often.

Mark believes this shows the benefits of managing our email. “Developing strategies such as only checking emails at certain hours of the day may be a good idea,” she says. “It may help us to reduce our stress levels and improve our focus.”