According to research by Dr. Gloria Mark at the University of California in 2004, Generation Z’s attention spans have shortened immensely with the rise of AI and social media. Science teacher Gareth Engler sees a main concern associated with this decline in attention spans affecting students and their ability to learn in school.
“Just an overall decline in education [and] the ability not to focus.” Engler said.
However, despite this danger, he sees a possible way to prevent a more serious drop. For instance, one of the possible reasons this generation’s attention span is not as healthy as it should be is because they crave instant gratification and answers rather than taking the time to search for a more thorough answer.
One activity that helps with attention span is an activity that involves being focused on one subject for a long amount of time, reading. Last year in August, the Walton Family Foundation conducted a study on how much this generation reads. The results were surprising: 35% of Gen Z students dislike reading, and 43% say they rarely or never read for fun.
As a result, the decline in reading in Gen Z can be one of the leading causes for shorter attention spans. With an absence of reading, Engler sees, once again, a negative effect on education.
“[We need] tons more investment in education,” Engler said.
Investment in education would greatly improve the way students learn.
“I’d say, tons more investment in education… having more teachers so that we can start to break up and everyone [gets] what they need.”
Greater investment in education,of course, is not the only way to prevent students’ attention spans from dropping. Another way could be by reducing screen time, especially on social media.
“A great start [is] getting phones out of the way,” Engler said, “[and] working on [activities] to keep people more engaged.” Engler said.
Engler also hopes for the phone policy to become more strict, in order to help students in school.
“The phone policy is a start,” Engler said. “Right now we said, ‘Oh, you can’t have your phones out,’ but they can be on the body, which doesn’t really help.”
According to C. Kirabo Jackson, Rucker Johnson, and Claudia Persico’s paper on funding in public schools, if Engler’s hopes become real in the next few years, students’ ability to focus,pay attention for longer periods of time, and their grades should improve. For the time being, students must follow Engler’s advice and work to be better regarding education.
“If you don’t have the attention span, you’re not able to sit with that discomfort and fail but keep struggling to reach that level of success eventually.”