You read the same paragraph three times. Your eyes move, nothing lands, and a hand drifts toward the phone before you have decided anything.
It feels like something has gone wrong with you. It is more useful to see it as a mismatch: reading asks for a kind of attention that most of your day no longer practises.
Why can't I focus when I read?
Reading is slow, single-channel and unrewarded for long stretches. Nothing flashes, nothing changes every few seconds, and the payoff arrives gradually.
Much of a modern day looks different. Gloria Mark's recent studies measured average attention on a single screen before switching at about 47 seconds. If that is the rhythm your attention has been rehearsing, a page that asks for ten quiet minutes is a sharp change of gear. That is an observation rather than a research finding: the 47-second figure is a measurement, not evidence that switching harms reading.
Source: Gloria Mark, Attention Span (2023).
Does short-form video make it harder?
It is linked to it, yes, though the evidence is correlational.
A 2025 meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin pooled 71 studies covering about 98,299 people. Heavier short-form video use was linked to poorer attention and, most strongly, poorer inhibitory control, which is the ability to hold back the impulse to switch.
That second part matters for reading. Focus is partly about what you attend to and partly about what you resist while you do it.
Because the studies are correlational, they cannot say that video caused the difference. Someone who already struggles to focus may also watch more of it. Both directions are plausible.
Source: Nguyen et al., Psychological Bulletin, 2025.
Does having my phone nearby matter?
In one study, yes, even when you are not using it.
Ward and colleagues tested people on working-memory and fluid-intelligence tasks. They did best with their phone in another room and worst with it on the desk, with pocket or bag in between. This held even when the phone was silenced and untouched, and the effect was larger for people who were more dependent on their phones.
Later replications found smaller or mixed effects, so treat this as suggestive rather than settled. It is still a cheap thing to try, because the fix costs nothing.
Source: Ward, Duke, Gneezy & Bos, Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2017.
Is it the phone buzzing, or me reaching for it?
Mostly you reaching. An observational study of real-life use found that about 89% of smartphone interactions were started by the user rather than prompted by a notification.
So turning notifications off helps, but it does not remove the main source of interruption.
Source: Heitmayer & Lahlou, Computers in Human Behavior, 2021.
How can I increase my attention span for reading?
The most encouraging evidence is about reducing input rather than adding willpower.
In a 2025 randomised trial in PNAS Nexus, 467 participants had mobile internet blocked on their phones for two weeks. Sustained attention improved, by an amount the authors compared 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.
That is a strong result for a short intervention. It does not mean you must do exactly this. It does suggest the direction.
Source: Castelo et al., PNAS Nexus, 2025.
Could poor sleep be part of it?
It could. A 2025 meta-analysis in Frontiers in Psychiatry covered 21 cohort studies and 548,338 people. Each extra hour of daily screen time was associated with a bedtime about 13.2 minutes later, roughly 3 to 5 minutes less sleep, and higher odds of difficulty falling asleep.
These are associations, and the amounts per hour are small. But they add up across an evening. That study links screen time to sleep, not sleep to focus, so the idea that a tired mind rereads the same line is plain observation rather than a finding.
Source: He et al., Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2025.
What actually helps when I sit down to read?
None of the following is a research finding. It is practical advice built on the points above.
- Move the phone to another room. Not face down, not in your bag. Remove the thing being reached for.
- Start small on purpose. Ten minutes, then stop if you want to. A short session you finish teaches your attention that reading ends.
- Notice the urge and keep your eyes on the page. It rises and passes. Switching feeds it.
- Read at a time you are rested. If evenings are your only slot and your sleep is short, expect worse focus and do not read it as failure.
- Reread without blame. Losing the thread is the moment the skill gets trained, not proof it is missing.
- Reduce short-form video before reading, not just during. Short-form video use is linked to poorer attention, so it is worth trying a gap before you sit down.
If you want a voice for the first few minutes of a gap like that, Boredom's Daily Reset is three guided minutes for exactly that stretch. It is optional, and a phone in another room does most of the work.
The short version
Trouble focusing on reading is common, and it is better explained by how your attention has been used than by anything wrong with you. Short-form video and a nearby phone are each linked to worse attention or working memory, while constant switching is something Gloria Mark's work measured rather than linked to focus.
The encouraging part is that a randomised trial found sustained attention improved after two weeks of less mobile internet. Start with ten minutes, with the phone out of the room, and let the next page be the only one you have to get through.