Voice of British Muslim Women

Maria Sadaf, Islamabad

I used to be able to read for hours. I mean genuinely absorbed – the kind of reading where you look up and the afternoon has gone. These days I find myself re-reading the same paragraph three times, my hand drifting toward my phone between sentences, my mind already somewhere else before the page has finished speaking to me. I don’t think I am alone in this. In fact, I know I am not.

Something is happening to our attention, and it matters more than we usually admit.

According to research by Dr. Gloria Mark at University of California, the average attention span on a digital device was approximately 150 seconds in 2004. By 2012 it had dropped to 75 seconds. By 2024 it had reached a staggering low of 47 seconds. It appears as if we are becoming structurally incapable of sustained thought.

By 2025, the average social media user focuses on a single post for just 8.25 seconds, and teen users toggle between apps every 44 seconds, compared to 2.5 minutes a decade ago. Meanwhile, a comprehensive study from Karolinska Institute, published in Pediatrics Open Science in 2025 and tracking over 8000 children from age 10 – 14, found that children who spend significant time on social media experience a gradual and measurable decline in their ability to concentrate.

Dr. Gloria Mark’s research also found that as our attention span shrinks, our perceived stress levels and heart rates rise – the constant behavior of checking creates a state of continuous partial attention, where consciousness is never fully present.

We are overstimulated and undernourished.

Why Attention is Everything

When you cannot pay attention, you cannot learn – not really. You can skim surfaces, collect fragments, accumulate information without ever understanding it. Cal Newport, computer science professor and author of ‘Deep Work’, argues that the ability to concentrate without distraction on a cognitively demanding task has become simultaneously rarer and more valuable. Lose it, and you lose capacity to solve hard problems, build real knowledge, or do meaningful work.

But attention also governs our relationships. Think of the last time someone was truly, completely present with you – no phone on the table, no eyes drifting. How rare that felt. How seen you felt. Distracted listening is a form of absence. We are physically present and emotionally elsewhere, and the people we love register this even when they cannot name it.

Then there is mental health. Researchers have documented that participants who constantly switch between digital platforms experience mental fragmentation – shortened attention spans, difficulty staying present in conversations, and challenges sustaining coherent communication in both personal and professional settings. Fragmented attention breeds anxiety. A mind that cannot settle cannot rest.

In her 1951 work ‘Waiting for God’, Simone Weil, the French philosopher, wrote something I have returned to many times, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” To give someone – or something – your full attention is an act of love. To withhold it habitually is a quiet form of impoverishment, for them and for you.

What Has Actually Helped Me

I want to be honest here: I have not solved this. But I have found things that genuinely move the needle.

The first was the simplest and hardest – the deliberate creation of boredom. I stopped filling every gap. Waiting in a queue, I put the phone away. Cooking, I turned off the podcast. At first it was uncomfortable in a way that surprised me. Then thoughts began to arrive – real thoughts, not reactions. This, I learned, is what neuroscientists call the default mode network activating: the state the brain enters when not externally stimulated, which is associated with creativity, consolidation of memory, and self-reflection.

The second was reading books. Not articles, not threads – books. Long, demanding books that require you to hold a thought across chapters. It is, in effect, attention training. I treat it the way some people treat the gym: a daily practice that builds a capacity I need for everything else.

The third was single tasking. Studies from 2024 show that media multitaskers underperform by 20% in attention-based tasks compared to single taskers. Doing one thing at a time is not old-fashioned – it is cognitively sound.

What Islam Taught Me About Attention

The concept I kept returning to in Islamic tradition is ‘tafakkur’ – deep, deliberate contemplation.

The Holy Qur’an states: “In the creation of the heavens and the earth and in the alternation of the night and the day there are indeed Signs for people of understanding, who remember Allah standing, sitting and lying on their sides and ponder over the creation of the heavens and the earth…” (3:191-192)

This is not passive day dreaming. It is directed, sustained attention – attention given to creation as a means of knowing the creator.

Then there is Salah – the five daily Prayers. What I have come to understand is that salah is, among other things, a structured training programme for the attention. The concept of ‘khushu’ – the humble, present, focused state the Quran commands of believers in Prayer – is essentially mindfulness in its deepest form. Regular practice of ‘khushu’ can improve overall focus and concentration not just during Prayer, but in daily activities as well, while mindful prayer also reduces stress and anxiety by promoting relaxation and emotional regulation.

The Holy Qur’an says: “The believers shall attain their goal; Those who are humble in their Prayers” (23: 2-3)

Success – actual, complete success – is tied not to productivity but to presence of heart. Five times a day we are asked to stop, reorient, and give our full attention to the One Who gave us the capacity for it in the first place. That interruption of the day, which once felt like a pause from real life, I have come to understand as the architecture of focused life.

A Final Thought

Attention is not just a cognitive resource. It is a moral one. what we pay attention to shapes what we become – our values, our character, our relationship with God and with the people around us. A life of fragmented attention is a life lived at the surface of things. The world will keep trying to steal it. The notifications will keep coming, the scroll will keep moving, the next thing will always be one tap away. But reclaiming our attention – through contemplation, through presence, through Prayer – may be one of the most quietly radical acts available to us.

Sources

Mark, G. (2023). Attention Span. Hanover Square Press — cited in Swiss German University

SQ Magazine (2025). “Social Media Attention Span Statistics 2026”

Karolinska Institutet / Nivins, S. et al. (2025). Pediatrics Open Science. DOI: 10.1542/pedsos.2025-000922

Newport, C. (2016). Deep Work. Grand Central Publishing

Poles, A. & Husain et al. (2024/2025). “Impact of Social Media Usage on Attention Spans.” ResearchGate

Weil, S. (1951). Waiting for God. Harper & Row