We are living through the first era of mass attention deficit.
You’ll recognise it if, like me, you struggle to read a book from start to finish, or if you start a task only to end up following a maze of different weblinks instead. And you’ll understand it if you have friends who just can’t put their phones down: on average, we check them 150 times a day, according to Nokia research.
It would be tempting to say this is just a millennial phenomenon; that a generation of self-centered 20- and 30-somethings is getting sucked into the screen. But, if you thought this group is bad, just look to the next generation.
The brain is changing
Kids aged eight to 18 spend twice as much time with screens as they spend in school. Children have fundamentally different cognitive skills nowadays and they are too easily distracted, according to two pieces of research by the Pew Internet Project, in which US teachers said kids need more time away from digital technologies. In the UK, shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt has suggested children receive lessons in concentration – an ironic proposition, to be sure.
But fighting modern modalities is not the best way to fit the reality of consumption and comprehension today. If brains are evolving to favour constant, short bursts of information, it is unlikely this can be reversed. Even in 1976 a study found that in-lesson concentration ebbed and flowed, topping out at just 10 to 18 minutes.
Schools are adapting
That is why some believe “microlearning” – in which education is delivered in small, active and frequent snippets rather than big, sit-down monologues – holds the key.
While microlearning has not yet been widely adopted, the individual schools and growing number of district education authorities around the world that have done so are achieving excellent results. In the UK, the digital education initiative Khan Academy is among microlearning’s advocates.
Pupils at schools in Galway say they find fun in learning maths through short online video tuition, while schools across the whole of Los Altos , California, are now adopting the techniques. In Australia, standard school lessons are now just 45 minutes, working with, not against, the prevailing psychological imperative. Finnish schools go even further, with most allowing a 15-minute break after each 45- minute lesson . Punctuating scheduled lesson time with “free-play” break time has seemingly boosted student productivity in Finland.
Business must catch up
But, while education has taken strides to adapt to the way people’s minds work today, once they leave school these digital natives will enter a business environment that remains ill-equipped to embrace them.
Just look at the way in which companies welcome new staff. Induction is typically carried out through a day-long orientation in which training managers lecture new-starters and hand over a hefty company policy document that, like the books I struggle with, likely goes unread.
Next-generation employees, who today are learning and doing in a non-linear fashion, should not have to change their behaviour when they walk in the door of the wider economy. But business is not moving with anything like the pace of education.
Instead of adapting to the psychology of employees’ evolving comprehension, many workplaces fight it. Young people are conditioned to pull information. When faced with a workplace challenge, the Google generation is likely to search out the ad-hoc solution. But businesses like to push solutions at their staff, urging them to sing from a prescribed hymn sheet.
Consider how many offices impose limits and disciplinary measures on at-work use of Facebook. But what if staff use of social networks represents not just a skiver’s inclination to view friends’ status updates but a deeper desire for constant stimulus of any kind – fragments of fresh information that they are not receiving from their employer? Facebook is tapping into this with its corporate offering, this week announcing Facebook at Work , so it’ll be interesting to see what traction this gets in the enterprise world.
Viewed in this way, the media usage patterns exhibited by the next generation could be interpreted as clues to how businesses can best welcome their employees. What is often called a “distraction” tendency should instead be regarded as the natural order of things. It is employers who must now respond to the new reality.
Companies that don’t fit the learning and development profile of tomorrow’s staff will find it difficult to attract and retain employees; they will have trouble equipping them with vital on-the-job skills.
Decades-old training techniques must be ripped up in a microlearning revolution.
Ben Muzzell is co-founder of Looop , a cloud-based training platform for businesses.
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