Notifications, social media, short videos, constant demands on our attention: in a world where everything seems designed to capture our attention, concentrating can become a real challenge. Pupils, students and adults all notice the same thing: it seems harder and harder to stay focused on a single task for long. But is our ability to concentrate really declining, or is it our environment that has changed?
Are we less attentive than we used to be?
Reading a book for an hour, following a lesson without looking at your phone, working on an assignment without checking your messages: these activities sometimes seem to require a huge effort.
This goes far beyond school. At work, interruptions are multiplying. At university, students juggle between their course notes and their screens. And the youngest are growing up in an environment where digital distractions take up a lot of space.
It would be tempting to conclude that our brains have lost part of their ability to concentrate. The often quoted figure of an attention span of “8 seconds, shorter than a goldfish” points in that direction, but it is not based on any identifiable study.
In reality, research does not show that our attention span is declining overall, generation after generation. Concentration is a complex phenomenon that depends on the nature of the task, motivation, tiredness and the environment.
We also need to distinguish two things: our ability to sustain attention, and how often that attention is interrupted. This may well be where the main change lies.
An environment that constantly calls for our attention
Our brains have always been sensitive to novelty. An unusual noise, a movement or unexpected information naturally draws our attention. Digital tools are particularly good at exploiting this reflex.
A notification pops up. A message arrives. A video starts playing on its own. One article suggests another. At every moment, new information invites us to interrupt what we were doing.
The problem lies less in each individual distraction than in their accumulation.
Take a student revising for an hour. They check their phone several times, reply to a few messages, look something up online, then get drawn into a video. They spent an hour at their desk, but their attention regularly drifted away from their goal.
Being busy for an hour does not mean being focused for an hour. This explains why some study sessions feel long without having been very productive.
Multitasking: an illusion of efficiency
Listening to a lesson while answering messages, writing a document while keeping an eye on your emails, revising while following a conversation on social media: these habits have become common, and we often feel we are handling everything at once.
Yet when two tasks require conscious attention, the brain switches from one to the other rather than truly processing them in parallel. And each switch has a cost: you have to pick up the thread of your reasoning, remember where you were, and bring the relevant information back to mind.
The more complex the work, the more these interruptions take their toll. A pupil doing simple, repetitive calculations suffers less from them than a student trying to understand a proof or build an argument.
In other words, the quality of concentration depends as much on continuous attention as on the time spent working. Planning two hours of study is not enough: you also need to create the conditions to use them well.
Have screens changed the way we concentrate?
The question deserves a nuanced answer, because “screens” cover very different activities. Reading an e-book, taking an online course, playing a video game or scrolling through short videos all engage attention in very different ways.
Some digital activities even require intense concentration. A gamer can stay focused on a complex game for a long time. A programmer can spend hours on a problem. A student can follow an online lecture with interest. So it would be an exaggeration to say that screens destroy our ability to concentrate.
On the other hand, some uses encourage a rapid succession of stimuli. Short content, automatic recommendations and the ability to jump instantly from one activity to another encourage very fragmented consumption.
Research has found links between some kinds of intensive digital use and attention difficulties. But it remains hard to establish a simple cause and effect: people who already find it hard to concentrate may also be more drawn to these activities.
So the question is less how much time we spend in front of a screen than what we do on it, and in what conditions. We look at this in more detail in our articles on screens and video games and on the impact of social media.
Why is it easier to watch a series than to study?
A familiar paradox: a pupil who struggles to stay focused on their lesson for twenty minutes can watch a film for two hours or spend the whole evening on a video game. Do they lack willpower when studying? Not necessarily.
Concentration depends on how interested we are in an activity, how difficult it is and how much effort it requires:
- A series strings together events designed to hold your interest.
- A video game offers clear goals, immediate feedback and regular rewards.
- A chemistry chapter or a vocabulary list requires sustained effort, with benefits that only show after several days or weeks.
Learning also means holding and manipulating information in memory, solving problems and resisting the urge to look up the answer straight away. These activities place heavy demands on our mental resources.
So it is quite possible to stay focused for a long time on an exciting activity and still find it hard to concentrate on a less stimulating task. That does not mean you are incapable of concentrating: our attention varies greatly from one situation to another.
Can you train your concentration?
Concentration is not fixed. Our habits, our environment and the way we organise our work all affect our ability to stay focused. It is not about “training your brain” with special exercises, but about better managing the conditions in which you work. Five strategies can help.
1. Reduce interruptions
Putting your phone on silent, turning off notifications, closing unnecessary apps: that is all fewer distractions. For many people, leaving the phone in another room works better than turning it face down on the desk. The goal is to have fewer temptations to resist.
2. Set a precise goal
“Study maths” is vague. “Understand how to solve quadratic equations and do five exercises” gives a clear direction. A precise goal tells you where to focus your attention, and lets you see your progress.
3. Work in suitable blocks
A study session can be organised into periods of concentration with breaks in between. The Pomodoro technique, for example, traditionally suggests 25 minutes of work followed by a short break.
It is a good starting point, but not an ideal length for everyone. Some tasks need longer periods, others more frequent breaks. What matters is finding a rhythm that suits the difficulty of the work and how you feel at the time. To organise these sessions over the week, see how to plan your studies.
4. Learn actively
Passively rereading a lesson for a long time invites distraction. Asking yourself questions, rephrasing an explanation, doing exercises or recalling an idea from memory, on the other hand, forces you to engage your attention. These methods have another advantage: they help you understand and remember. The Feynman technique and good note-taking are two good examples.
5. Respect the need for recovery
Sleep, tiredness, stress and breaks directly affect the ability to stay focused. A student who sleeps too little will find it hard to concentrate, even in a perfectly quiet environment (see our article on teenagers’ sleep).
Improving your concentration therefore also means protecting the physical and mental conditions for effective work.
Concentrating is also something you can learn
In primary school, secondary school and higher education alike, pupils and students are regularly asked to concentrate. But are they taught how to do it?
A pupil may know perfectly well that they need to work harder without knowing how to organise a study session, avoid distractions or react when they lose the thread. These skills are part of study skills, just like planning or memorising. For parents of younger children, we offer practical tips to improve concentration during homework.
If attention difficulties are significant, long-lasting and present in every situation (at school, at home, during leisure time), it is worth talking to a doctor or the school’s PMS or CLB centre: they may be a sign of ADHD, which calls for specific support.
What if the real challenge were to take back control of our attention?
Is our attention span really getting shorter? Current knowledge calls for caution: nothing shows that we have collectively become unable to concentrate.
Our environment, however, has changed profoundly. Opportunities for distraction are more numerous, more accessible and often designed to grab our attention. In this context, concentration becomes a particularly useful skill to develop.
This does not mean giving up screens, working in total silence or staying focused for hours without a break. It is rather about learning to recognise what distracts us, organising our environment and building habits that support good quality work.
Perhaps the challenge is not so much to recover a lost ability to concentrate as to learn again to choose consciously what we give our attention to.
Getting support
Does your child spend hours on homework without making progress, or switch off as soon as they open their books? At My Sherpa, an educational advisor first takes stock with you, then chooses a coach who works with your child on their study skills : organisation, managing distractions, active study techniques and independence. Private tutoring takes place at home anywhere in Belgium, or online.
