Briefing Chat: Can't focus? It's not your attention span, it's your notifications

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1:07Welcome to The Briefing Chat Show, the Friday show where we talk about a couple of articles that have been highlighted in The Nature Briefing, Nature's daily email roundup of the latest science news. And joining me this week is the brains behind The Briefing herself, Flora Graham, editor of The Nature Briefing. Flora, hi, how's it going? Hi, it's going great. Thanks for having me. Well, thank you for coming on. And I believe you've got a very interesting story for me today, if I can pay attention for long enough. Exactly. This is one that definitely resonates with me. And if you're listening to this podcast while doing something else, it might be relevant to you too.

1:40It's about attention span, the ability to focus and a little bit about multitasking. So, you know, I think the conventional wisdom is that attention spans are declining. Is that true? Is that what the science says? Well, this is a fairly complicated answer to that question. And thankfully, a nature feature is here to deal with every little nuance. This one is a classic example of there's a lot of research that says a lot of different things. Now, I think one thing I found really interesting about this feature was that it talks about a survey done in 2021 that found that most adults think, yeah, maybe my attention span is dropping a little bit.

2:24But what they really think is that younger people's attention spans are dropping. So it does seem to be something that in a way we empathize with for ourselves, but in a way maybe we're judging others for. And I think the idea that it's younger people does connect with the idea that maybe this has something to do with the digital distractions, the notifications, the availability of the smartphone, and whether those interactions are actually like fundamentally destroying our ability to concentrate. Yeah, I mean, I must confess that sometimes, not when I'm working, I'm always very dedicated when I'm working, but sometimes I find myself just opening Instagram or opening TikTok or something like that.

2:58I'm like, how do they even get here? So I empathize with that feeling, but I guess there's a little bit more to it, as you sort of alluded to. Well, I think the good news is, especially for people like you and I who feel like we are a bit more distracted, is that studies are showing that our fundamental ability to concentrate is not getting worse. So when researchers put people in a lab and they get them to do things like focus on spotting certain letters on a screen and things like that, people's ability to do that is not going down. However, there is evidence that all those digital distractions or distractions in general do affect us and they do erode our ability to effectively complete tasks, for example.

3:38So it is important to recognize that although your underlying ability is still just as strong, there are factors that can make it worse. So it's really about addressing those factors. And what are the sort of things that can make it worse? Are there particular aspects of these apps that pull us in? Well, a huge example is use of mobile phones and particularly while driving. So analyses have demonstrated that traffic collisions are more likely to occur if drivers are talking on their phones. When researchers do things like play sounds, have babies crying, dogs barking, during these tests of focus, people do perform worse.

4:16So it's just anything then that could be a distraction? Not necessarily the phone, it's just other things going on can distract us. But the phones are, I guess, the big things that are often pulling our attention. Yeah, absolutely. The studies are talking about the fact that workers, maybe in the mid-2000s, they could focus for two and a half minutes on a screen task without switching to something else. Ten years later, it was down to about 75 seconds. And in the 2020s, it was more like 47 seconds, according to some research. So it does make sense that in our work environments, there are many, many more things popping up on that screen now and then there would have been 20, 25 years ago, for sure.

4:53Now, the feature in nature doesn't necessarily recommend specific strategies for reducing those distractions. But of course, there's lots of stuff around there. I'm a big fan of the Pomodoro technique where you just like focus hard for 20 minutes and then let your brain kind of dissolve into jelly for five minutes so that it's not attempting to focus for too long. Because one of the things this feature does highlight is that our ability to focus does drop off and it comes and goes. And often we recall getting distracted, but we don't necessarily recall periods of focus. So our own understanding of how much we're able to focus is not always accurate.

5:31And we have to be aware that it is very difficult to maintain that high level of focus for longer than a few minutes. I mean, I know people who lock their phones away and that sort of thing. And I guess that could be a potential solution. But I do feel a little bit reassured that the attention span is still there. I just need to prevent the distractions. Absolutely. Turn off those notifications. Let this be your permission to turn off those notifications now. I'm sorry to everyone who needs to hear from me urgently, but I need to focus. And right now, I wanted to focus on a news story that I was reading in Nature, and it's all about data centers.

6:04And we know these are a big topic for a lot of people at the moment. And so some people have been considering, what if we shot them up into space? Yeah, I mean, what is the idea behind this? Because this sounds like a big reaction to some issues. So what kind of issues is this attempting to solve? Well, I mean, the big issues that people have probably heard of are the data centers use a lot of water. They use a lot of energy. Perhaps the grid is not able to support those energy demands. And, you know, more power plants need to be built. More infrastructure needs to be built in order to support them.

6:36And these data centers are obviously huge at the moment because they enable a lot of AI technologies. They also enable like the Internet and a lot of other things that we use. But the big push at the moment is with AI. But because of these demands on water and resources, they've become quite unpopular in some places. For example, there have been local authorities that have looked at doing moratoriums on building them until they can understand what the costs of them are. So one proposed solution is to put them into space instead. So I assume that these data centers use so much water for cooling.

7:10Is that right? Yes, they use it for cooling. And that's why some people have suggested that putting them to space could be a good idea because space, as we know, is quite cold. So there's several proposals that are floating around and most of them are from big firms that people might have heard of. There's companies like SpaceX, there's Blue Origin, there's even Google that are investigating this space. And what they're proposing is to have big constellations of satellites that sort of link together and network together and they would function as data centres. And you could use the coolness of space to cool them.

7:45And you could get energy to empower them from the sun rather than using resources here on Earth. Now, that's not quite as simple as that, but that's certainly the proposal. But space is a vacuum, isn't it? So being really cold and cooling things down is not quite as straightforward as it might sound. Exactly that, yes. While space is cold, it is a vacuum. So there's not things to sort of take that heat away. So you could use structures like are used on the International Space Station to cool things down. They're basically great big foils that take the heat away from it. But they would be probably too weighty to be used on these constellations.

8:21So there's certainly some technological aspects to overcome to get this to work. And one thing that I know astronomers are concerned about, as are many others, is the proliferation of satellites in space already from big communication systems. What would launching all of these hypothetical little satellites into space mean for space junk and safety up there? Well, that is another big concern with this idea. So, for example, SpaceX shared plans recently to launch one million satellites to form an orbital data center into low Earth orbit. And for context, the number at the moment of total satellites in low Earth orbit is 15 ,000.

9:01So this is a significant increase on that. And there are estimates that if these plans were to go through, every image captured by the very large telescope in Chile, which is an important telescope for a lot of science, would lose 10 % of its data because its images would just be marred by all of these satellites going past. So you talked about local authorities on the ground and people standing maybe in opposition to large data centers on the ground. What kind of regulation would there be for launching all this stuff into space? And would we as regular average people have any way to object if we didn't think this was a good idea?

9:37So as you say, like on the ground, there are some objections and there are, you know, various things being done. In terms of space, it's a little bit more complicated. but at the moment the regulatory agencies have been acting quickly. So the US Federal Communications Commission, which oversees satellites, they accepted SpaceX's proposal within a matter of days. It's been open to public comment and it's not yet been given approval so perhaps the public can comment and say what they think about that. But that's only in the US, right? The FCC. So that's open to people in the US. I guess that every country and group would have its own issues to deal with.

10:13Indeed. SpaceX is a US-based company, and they're overseen by the FCC in this particular regard. There are other companies that are looking into it. There are various companies in China, for example, that are also looking to do this. So I guess we'll see what will happen in the future. From researchers' perspectives, they're a bit concerned that some of these ideas are a little bit optimistic. As we discussed, some of the technology needs to be sort of ironed out before you could do something like this. and while organizations like SpaceX have suggested that this could happen in a few years, researchers are saying that five years would be optimistic and realistically you'd maybe be looking at 10, 15, even 20 years before you could actually get this technology off the ground.

10:57So from some researchers' perspective, this may not be a quick solution to the problems that we're encountering with data centers. This actually made me think of an opinion piece that we published in Nature just a couple of weeks ago about space diplomacy. And that was by a group of people who call themselves space diplomats. And they were saying that we really need an approach that can be used in any science or technology driven domain that involves many groups that have to share a single fragile infrastructure. So it would work for space. It would work for the high seas, for biosecurity. So, yeah, maybe worth checking out what they say as well.

11:33No, definitely. And we'll link to that in the show notes. But I think that's actually all we've got time for this week. listeners if you're interested in those stories and you would like more like them delivered directly to your inbox written quite often by the wonderful flora graham then you can sign up to nature briefing we'll put a link of where you can do that in the show notes as well but for now i've been nick petra ciao and i'm flora graham thanks for listening the mattress warehouse memorial day sale is on and you can save up to fifteen hundred dollars warehouse wide for a limited time save up to$500 on adjustable sets from Tempur-Pedic Concealing, or get a Purple King mattress for the price of a queen.

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