24 May,2026 12:53 PM IST | Mumbai | Akshita Maheshwari
Scrolling so much has been making my attention span shorter and shorter every day. Pics/iStock
Those who scroll online a lot know that Subway Surfers gameplay is often attached to Reels to ensure that viewers' attention remains engaged. According to research from the University of California, in 2004, an individual's average attention span on a digital device was approximately 150 seconds long. Today, it has plummeted down to 47 seconds. That means, my attention span is nearly one-third of what it was in the year I was born.
When I go to watch movies today, I find myself playing Subway Surfers, because even the most masaledaar flicks cannot hold my attention. Now that I know I have this problem, here's how I am trying to solve it.
Stop multitasking. Your life is not an optimisation project. You don't need to listen to a podcast while you cook. You don't need music while you take a shower. You don't need to turn on a sit-com in the background as you set aside your laundry. Sometimes, you can just do something and the background noise can be your thoughts. Oh, the horrors! I know it sounds scary, but it gets easy very quickly. If you can cook without a podcast, eventually you will be able to watch a movie without playing Subway Surfers.
Your brain is a creature of habit, and so are your hands. Every time I open my phone, I instinctively open Instagram first. Somehow, I get stuck scrolling; 45 minutes later, I remember that I opened my phone to call my mother, but I forgot entirely and now my day is missing 45 minutes. Now, I stay ahead of my own brain. I change the location of the Instagram app every few days, so I don't instinctively open it.
All my friends and I have the same notification sound and ringtone. Every time a phone buzzed in the room, I used to pick up mine to check whether I had a new message to read. Nine times out of time I didn't, and then I ended up getting sucked into my phone anyway. And so, I changed my notification sound and ringtone. Now I know when my particular phone is ringing and not someone else's. I don't pick up my phone unnecessarily. While you're at it, turn off notifications for all social media apps. You don't need to know every single time someone posts on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook. I keep Whatsapp on, since I need it for work, but come 8 pm and I am on DND.
The problem isn't watching videos, it is the inability to watch longer ones - because what is a movie if not a really long video. In the pursuit of fixing an attention span, we directly start watching Polish films or reading Moby Dick. But these are things that even people with amazing attention spans have trouble getting through. Start slow, read a crime thriller or watch a sit-com. Easy is your friend.
This one's perhaps the hardest of them all. Pretend that you have a good attention span. No matter how loudly your phone calls your name, don't listen to it. Focus on the film you are watching no matter how boring it is. Carry a book everywhere you go, and read if you get the scroll-itch. If you're too bored, pick up a conversation with a stranger on the streets. Do literally anything but don't pick up the phone. Eventually, it'll feel natural to watch a three hour long film, read a 800-page book, or rawdogg a 10-hour train journey.
