A typical workday for me is spent almost entirely in front of a computer screen. In between tasks, I browse the internet on my phone. I often spend my lunch break scrolling through news feeds, videos, articles, and whatever other digital information I can consume. While driving home, I often listen to an audiobook or a podcast. When I actually get home, sprinkled between chores and daily tasks, there’s more screen time, more news feeds, and more of the digital world.

With a constant connection to the information pipeline, I know that I’ve created a state of numbness for myself. My mind, like the minds of so many others, is not only overused, but it never has time to do the one thing that it really needs to do, which is nothing.

For several decades, neuroscientists have studied a part of the brain that becomes active when a person is not focused on a task. Known as the Default Mode Network (DMN), brain imaging studies have shown that neural activity in this region begins when a person is in a resting state and ends when they are forced to focus on something. The DMN is still widely researched, and there is an ongoing discussion about what role it actually plays. Some neuroscientists believe that the DMN is also active when we are asleep and dreaming.

Without a doubt, our constant consumption of information, whether through entertainment or social media, affects the DMN. In an era where nearly every facet of online life is synonymous with the “infinite scroll,” it’s easy to see how the mind is constantly interrupted.

The infinite scroll has become so ubiquitous with online life that it’s almost hard to imagine browsing the Internet without it. In his op-ed at The Times, James Marriott suggests that this trend did not begin with the invention of the smartphone but rather with the era of television. The desire to constantly search for the next best thing to entertain our minds is not unique to the internet era, smartphones, streaming services, or social media. He goes on to discuss how in the year 1980, CNN formally debuted as a 24-hour news channel. From there forward, it was entirely possible for people to engage in television at all hours. This shift in technology is not unlike life today, where the infinite scroll offers us the option for information. The result is something addicting, that subtle dopamine rush that’s just slight enough to keep us from wanting to close the laptop, put down the phone, or shut off the noise.


I began my English undergrad in 2007, enrolling in various professional writing and journalism courses. At that time, Facebook launched just three years prior and Twitter only one. Those infantile years for social media culminated in a lot of uncertainty regarding the future of print media. Like many of my classmates and even some of my professors, there was a constant conversation about whether or not we had a future career in writing.

Around this time, many newspapers and magazines were just beginning to move toward a hybrid publishing model. This involved some combination of printed stories and web content. Over the next few years, the impact would be felt particularly in subscription-based newspapers and magazines, where there was not yet a definite path to monetize their online content. With so many competing sources for the written word, it was not clear how print publications would survive. I confess to being one of the guilty. Why would I pay for news when I could find it online for free? This mentality was likely felt by many in my generation.

In those early years of social media, the future of the printed word and how publishers would monetize it was not the only conversation floating around. There was another conversation, more subtle and insidious, that captured the imagination of my friends, classmates, coworkers, and teachers during a time when our lives were changing almost daily by the evolving digital landscape.

That topic was the inability to focus. When others on my college campus expressed a similar sentiment, I knew that I wasn’t alone.

Some believe that our attention is being stolen. I want to say that I’m not convinced, that it’s not entirely possible for the forces of entertainment and information to steal our attention unless we give them permission. We allow ourselves to be distracted. And why shouldn’t we? Information is addictive.

One of the ways I allowed myself to become pulled into the digital vortex is when I stopped reading books. It almost hurts to admit that, but there was a stretch of several years after I graduated college where I didn’t even touch a book. In the last few years, I found a way to change that. But if I’m going to be realistic about how my attention has changed over time, choosing to stop reading was one of the biggest impacting factors that has affected my ability to focus on a single thing. This didn’t happen because my attention was stolen. It happened because I gave it away, like a misguided spending habit for a person who has lost sight of the value of money. In this case, the currency is my attention.

There is too much information in our heads. It really is that simple. Very little time goes by without our minds being connected to a virtual pipeline of content, whether it be newsfeeds or infinite access to cat videos. All of this information exists with varying degrees of importance, but because we give ourselves such little time to digest any of it, it is almost all treated as unimportant and therefore discarded to make room for the next thing.


If the mind has no time to wander, then the imagination goes unused. My hope is that if the issue is that simple, then the solution must be equally as simple.

For the vast majority of us, a complete digital detox is unrealistic if not impossible. Such a thing would involve more than just unplugging from reels and newsfeeds. It would require disconnecting from families, obligations, and in a lot of cases, our jobs. However, even those of us who live incredibly busy lives can afford a few minutes a day to give the mind a break.

At the present time, I’m engaged in an ongoing experiment. I’m consciously consuming less information. With that, I’m also spending more time with the information that I do consume. These strategies are meant to help me get back in touch with the level of focus I had in a time before life was so clearly impacted by the digital world.

Lately, I’m retraining myself to not always pick up the phone as soon as I have a break with something. This is particularly useful at work, where, between sessions of troubleshooting and fixing software issues, I force my mind to take a break. In doing so, I find that some solutions actually come to me when I’m not really thinking about them.

Another strategy I’ve implemented is to spend at least some time, even just fifteen minutes, completely alone, with no music and no screen in front of me, no videos, no video games, no work, nothing. My favorite time to do this is in the evening, just before bed, when the house is really quiet. Or on weekend mornings, before anyone is awake, with my morning coffee.

I think the biggest benefit of this is that the mind has time and space to put all of the things it experienced throughout the day into logical order.

I know it’s entirely within my power to retrain myself. I know that I created my habits by choice. Over the years, I allowed the digital world to consume me. The fix starts by knowing and accepting that. Moving forward, the choice is really up to me.