You have probably heard that attention spans are collapsing, and you have probably also heard that the whole idea is a myth. Both are half right, which is why the question feels so slippery.
The short version: something real sits underneath the phrase, but "attention span" is an everyday label for several different things, and most of them move with your situation.
Is attention span a real thing?
Yes, in the sense that attention can be measured and it varies between people and across days.
No, in the sense that there is one tidy quantity called "attention span" that works like height. It helps to break it into parts. Sustained attention is staying on a task over time. Task switching is moving between tasks. Inhibitory control is holding back an impulse, such as the urge to check something.
These are different things, and you can probably notice that you are better at one than another on a given day. That is a reason to be careful with the single-number version, not a reason to dismiss the idea.
Is attention span a psychological construct or a cognitive skill?
A bit of both, and the distinction is useful.
A construct is a concept researchers use to organise what they observe. "Attention span" works that way in everyday talk: a handy summary of several measurable behaviours.
A skill is something that responds to practice and conditions. Attention is partly like that. Sleep seems to matter, and so do the habits you have built around your devices.
In one study, Green and Bavelier (2003) trained non-gamers on an action video game for an hour a day over 10 days, and they improved on visual attention tasks compared with a Tetris control. That does not mean games are a cure for anything. It does show attention performance can change with what you do.
Source: Green & Bavelier, Nature, 2003.
What did Gloria Mark actually say about attention span?
Gloria Mark, at UC Irvine, reports in her book Attention Span (2023) that in her recent studies the average attention on a single screen before switching was about 47 seconds.
Notice what that number measures. It is how long people stay on one screen before moving. It is a description of behaviour on screens.
It does not say you are incapable of focusing for longer. People read long books and sit through films.
Source: Gloria Mark, Attention Span (2023).
Is the idea that attention is shrinking a myth?
The dramatic version, that everyone's attention is permanently broken, is a big claim, and nothing here establishes it.
A 2025 meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin pooled 71 studies and about 98,299 people. Heavier short-form video use was linked to poorer attention and, most strongly, poorer inhibitory control. It was also linked to more stress and anxiety.
The key word is linked. These are correlations, so they cannot say whether the videos change attention or whether people who struggle to hold back impulses watch more of them.
Source: Nguyen et al., Psychological Bulletin, 2025.
Can attention recover?
There is encouraging evidence that it can.
In a randomised trial published in PNAS Nexus in 2025, Castelo and colleagues blocked mobile internet on the phones of 467 participants for two weeks. Sustained attention improved, by an amount comparable to about 10 years of age-related decline. Mental health and subjective well-being improved too. Calls and texts still worked, and increased nightly sleep was one of the mechanisms.
So the thing people call attention span responded to a change in environment within a fortnight. That is hard to square with the idea that it is either fixed or gone.
Source: Castelo et al., PNAS Nexus, 2025.
Does the phone matter even when you are not using it?
One study suggests it might. Ward and colleagues (2017) found people did best on working-memory and fluid-intelligence tests with their phone in another room, and worst with it on the desk, even when it was silenced and unused. The effect was larger for people who were more phone-dependent.
Later replications found smaller or mixed effects, so treat this as one study rather than settled fact.
Source: Ward, Duke, Gneezy & Bos, Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2017.
So what should you do with this?
You do not need to decide whether the phrase is a myth. A few practical things follow either way:
- Stop treating one number as your worth. Forty-seven seconds describes screens, not you.
- Protect sleep first. It was one route to the improvements in the trial above, and it costs nothing.
- Change the environment before the willpower. Notifications off, the phone in another room when you need to think. The gains in the research came from changed conditions, not from trying harder.
- Give it a couple of weeks. The trial effects showed up over a fortnight, not overnight.
If you want a little help in the gap that opens when you stop reaching, Boredom's Daily Reset is three guided minutes for exactly that moment. It is optional, and the habits above work without it.
The short version
Attention is real, measurable and made of several parts. "Attention span" as one fixed number is a popular shorthand, and the scariest claims about it are bigger than anything shown here.
In the studies above, blocking mobile internet for two weeks improved sustained attention in one trial, and heavier short-form video use was linked to poorer attention in another. Neither is the whole picture, and a fortnight away from mobile internet is a reasonable place to start.