Re:Thinking with Adam GrantYour attention span is not broken with historian Daniel Immerwahr | ReThinking with Adam Grant
At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
The attention crisis is more moral panic than cognitive decline
- Daniel Immerwahr argues the popular claim that technology is “shrinking attention spans” is conceptually weak and historically repetitive, resembling earlier panics about novels, pianos, and other media.
- They highlight an apparent contradiction in modern complaints: we say people are distracted, yet also increasingly polarized and niche-obsessive—suggesting distraction coexists with deep, sustained attention.
- The conversation reframes attention as task- and motivation-dependent rather than a fixed trait, making “attention span” hard to measure as a single innate capacity.
- A large cross-national meta-analysis (1990–2021) is discussed showing no decline in children’s concentration performance and improvements among adults, undermining claims of broad attentional deterioration.
- Instead of asking whether we can pay attention, they argue the more meaningful debate is normative and cultural: what deserves our attention, and when does concern become a moral panic versus a real emergency?
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideas“Attention spans are collapsing” conflicts with “people are becoming more obsessed.”
Immerwahr notes that polarization and niche “micro-tribes” (fandoms, conspiracies) often involve intense, sustained focus, suggesting the era of distraction is also an era of obsession.
Attention isn’t a single measurable tank; it’s task-specific.
They argue psychology can measure performance on tasks, but not a universal “attention span” like height—because how long you focus depends on context, incentives, and interest.
The best evidence discussed doesn’t show a broad attention decline.
Grant cites a meta-analysis across 32 countries (1990–2021) finding children’s sustained-attention performance did not drop and adults’ performance increased, challenging the standard doom narrative.
The real complaint is often about “wrong objects of attention,” not inability to focus.
Long, effortful engagement still exists (e.g., 75+ hour games like Baldur’s Gate 3); the controversy shifts to whether opera/novels are “better” than games/social media and why.
Media panics repeat, and yesterday’s “junk” becomes today’s “gold standard.”
Novels once triggered alarm (including moralized fears about women readers), just as screens do now—suggesting our judgments are shaped by nostalgia and status, not only cognition.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesSo weirdly, the age of distraction is also the age of obsession.
— Daniel Immerwahr
I found a, uh, uh, 1843 complaint by the, uh, writer Nathaniel Hawthorne... He's like, "The generation that is born after this, they're never gonna have real conversations... because basic possibility for people existing in community has been eroded by this new technology." And he's talking about the stove replacing the open hearth.
— Daniel Immerwahr
I just have to acknowledge, that is not what the internet has done to us.
— Daniel Immerwahr
Like, I would say, "Okay, climate change, that's an emergency. Short attention spans, that's a panic."
— Daniel Immerwahr
My biggest takeaway from Daniel is that we have not lost the capacity to pay attention. What's shifted is our motivation. It's not that we can't focus. It's that we're interested in focusing on different things than we were in the past.
— Adam Grant
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
