Nine years ago the average adult spent eighteen minutes on their phone every day. Fast forward seven years and that number jumped, quite dramatically: two hours and forty-eight minutes per day. Not only does this trend affect adults, but the adults then teach these habits to their children.
NYU marketing professor Adam Alter writes in Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked,Using head-mounted cameras, researchers have shown that infants instinctively follow their parents’ eyes. Distracted parents cultivate distracted children, because parents who can’t focus teach their children the same attentional patterns.
Besides the many negative effects such inattention creates—poor sleeping patterns, leading to suppressed immune response; mood swings; traffic accidents—add another to the list: failure to reach your goals.
While technology is not the only cause of inattention, it certainly is a main driver. A forthcoming study a the University of Waterloo in Canada, which will be published in Journal of Experimental Psychology, has connected a penchant for spacing out with giving up on your ambitions. Lead author Brandon Ralph sums it up:
Those who often can’t keep their minds on their tasks — such as thinking about weekend…
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