Gloria Mark, UC Irvine, has measured screen attention since 2004. Then: 2.5 minutes per window. By 2012: 75 seconds. By 2016: 47 seconds, median 40.

Twenty years of human attention compressing into a single breath.

We don't think the lesson is to fight it. It's to design work so the 47-second window does something real, and the deeper sessions are protected from screens entirely.

— Mark, Attention Span (2023)