Attention Decay

The measurable decline of human focus.

The 47-Second Rule

According to research conducted by Gloria Mark at UC Irvine, the average time spent on a single screen before switching context was 2.5 minutes in 2004. By 2012, it had dropped to 75 seconds. Today, it averages 47 seconds.

The human brain requires approximately 20 minutes of sustained focus to enter states of flow or deep work. The architecture of the modern smartphone mathematically guarantees that the average user will never enter these states while the device is powered on.