Where did our attention spans go, and can we get them back?

The Oxford English Dictionary announced its word of the year at the
end of 2024: brain rot. The term relates to the supposedly negative
effects of consuming social media content, but it struck a chord
more widely with many of us who feel we just don’t have the mental
capacity we once did. Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at
the University of California, Irvine, has been studying our waning
attention spans for 20 years. She tells Madeleine Finlay why she
believes our powers of concentration are not beyond rescue, and
reveals her top tips for finding focus. Help support our
independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod