Have you ever been deep in the zone, trying to finish your tasks, then suddenly you're bombarded with notifications from your friend who is sending you TikTok videos? And now, even though you were highly concentrated on what you were trying to finish, the moment you see your phone light up, all you can think about is checking those TikToks. So, you unlock your phone, and now you're stuck in the TikTok black hole for a few minutes. And now, guess what? It's hard to get back in the zone.
It's a common struggle in the age of social media to get distracted and lose concentration because of your phone. We all have distractions in our lives, and it takes a lot of effort to stay focused on what we need to do when other things are vying for our attention. The solution to this problem seems easy: just put your phone on Do Not Disturb mode, and no one will disturb you. But sometimes that's not an option because we need our phones if something important comes up.
But for many of us, being distracted from our work isn't the only issue. Concentrating can be challenging even when we know we have a ton of stuff to do. Instead, we find ourselves endlessly scrolling through social media because it gives us more of a dopamine rush than actually working or studying. So, we're stuck in this cycle of constantly scrolling because we can't seem to focus on anything else.
Since social media has taken over our lives, we have had this constant need for stimulation and instant gratification.
And it has become a real issue not only when it comes to being productive but also when it comes to our attention span. The constant flow of information and stimuli on these platforms can be overwhelming, making it difficult to focus on a single task without getting bored or distracted. So why exactly does this happen?
When scrolling through our feeds, we are bombarded with many images, videos, or articles. And all of them are competing for our attention. And believe it or not, spending a large portion of our day on social media is bound to impact our lives as well.
Have you noticed how you can be scrolling through Instagram for a while, but then you start feeling restless and need something else to keep you entertained? And it's not just on social media. Have you ever started cleaning your room, and suddenly, you just didn't want to do it anymore? Well, that's because the excitement of finishing the task disappeared. After all, you're not getting as much stimulation as you're used to.
This desire for constant stimulation can be attributed to the influence of social media. We're always looking for the next thing to keep us entertained. And if we are required to focus and concentrate on tasks that can be considered boring but useful in the long run, we’ll bail. It’s not even intentional. It’s just our dopamine system working against us and we fail to put it straight.
The dopamine system or the motivation-reward pathway in our brain is responsible for us taking a task, plan, or idea to reality.
Dopamine is the motor for our desires and motivations and it responds to rewards. When an activity, person, or place gives us a pleasant stimulus, our brain will secrete dopamine. But you’ve probably heard this before, so let me better explain all of this through an analogy:
You know the story of Hensel and Gretel, right? Think of the dopamine system as you’d think of the kids leaving breadcrumbs trails behind them to be able to return home from a walk in the woods. Now the brain leaves these breadcrumbs every time we do something pleasant. And guess what, the easier it is to obtain that reward, the more we’re going to do it and the more breadcrumbs are left.
Now there are some breadcrumbs left somewhere, associated with finishing off a task after a few hours of boring work. But there is a huge pile of them over there from all the times we laughed at Insta Reels. Now our brain is this little child, who is placed at a crossroads, is faced with the choice of choosing the actions it will take next. And he’ll consider the breadcrumbs because guess what - he placed them there with a purpose in the first place - we like rewards.
Of course, it is way more complicated than that. But in a nutshell, this is dopamine. And now I hope you have a clearer image of the amount of effort it takes to do the right thing with your time. But if we’re not educating that “child” that is our brain, it’s going to end up affecting us in the long run.
So take responsibility for your days and accept the fact that it’s normal to have a bad attention span and concentration problem for a while until you build up that pile of breadcrumbs where it matters.
