Social media is ruining our attention span and we must take action Pulse Contributor's Opinion)

Attention span is the amount of time spent focused on something before becoming distracted. Distractibility occurs when attention is irrepressibly diverted to another activity or sensation.

Behaviors such as mindlessly scrolling through Instagram or TikTok while watching a movie are linked to difficulties in remembering things and having interrupted attention spans. Research conducted at Stanford University in California suggests that such behaviors may affect what is called our episodic memory. This shows overexposure to a certain pattern of thinking results in lasting impacts which have caused us to become used to instant gratification. If this gratification is not satiated ten seconds or less, we lose focus and keep swiping for the right content that will do just that, and that has resulted in negative impacts on our attention spans that must be reversed. Our minds were designed to take time to nurture, consume, create in return, not the opposite.

Major contributors to this dynamic are social media features. For example, Instagram reels, 30 seconds Tik Tok videos, 15 seconds Snapchat clips and many more. While these features seem harmless, they shrink our minds so little that we longer take actual time to listen, see, hear, and understand. Regardless of the relevance of a piece of content, if the first three seconds cannot grab a user's attention, it is undeserving of one’s time. And this is a deeply flawed construct that transcends from the digital realm into real scenarios in the real world.

Although most social media apps have considered this theory by adopting cautionary reminders. For example, TikTok alerts its users when they are scrolling too fast without fully digesting any content. Nonetheless, such measures are minimal compared to the colossal effects of social media's dine and dash culture.

As a progressive society, it is crucial to examine and take action. How easier it would have been if social media content delivery patterns only fit into how the human brain was wired. But it is the opposite, and it is up to us to reverse this continual damage.