The Soft Addiction of Distraction
Every time attention is given to a stranger’s thought, the mind trades away its own clarity. Through medicine I learned that attention works like blood flow: wherever it goes, life follows.
It used to be funny when the history teacher spoke about an era you didn’t care about. The focus wasn’t on the lesson but on the friend behind you, the one you’d play table tennis with in twenty minutes.
In high school, distraction had boundaries. The match lasted only thirty minutes; the bell eventually rang.
Today, distraction has no bell. With “auto-scroll” or “next episode”, distraction even manages itself now. A stranger speaks from another continent and is listened to as if attention were infinite, when in truth, it is priceless currency.
The Cost of Constant Input
Prolonged screen time hits each generation differently. In younger brains, heavy digital use reduces tissue in regions that form new ideas. Older generations may have skipped that stage, but not the consequences.
Constant input doesn’t damage a fully grown brain, but it limits decision-making and creativity, not through age, but through habit.
Informative audio or podcasts demand more of the brain than music. Speech makes working memory decode nonstop; silence lets it rest. That’s why preaching that goes on too long drains, but worship music relaxes.
From How Much to What Matters
University-educated adults often choose podcasts over music, but the cognitive cost to form original thought is greater.
A mind in clarity creates the space for original thought, and the day’s most joyful moments begin when life starts to measure success in clarity.
Perhaps what is missing isn’t another productivity method, but a moment, where the mind is empty.
Across Europe, adults now listen to an average of two hours of podcasts daily which comes down to a full workday each week.
The World Health Organization defines digital addiction not by time, but by behavioural symptoms such as loss of control. This matters. It shifts the question from how much time to what is being affected right now.
Regaining Power Through Clarity
The same mechanism I described in my earlier reflection on dopamine applies here as well: when clarity is introduced, the brain still expects input, trained to anticipate stimulation, making stillness feel restless.
Distraction has become the unnoticed addiction, rewarded by access, disguised as productivity. It doesn’t only delay original thought; it prevents it from forming at all.
In these accelerating times, efficiency and access do not equal clarity of mind, what’s needed for genuine understanding..
The ability to regulate distraction can be trained like any other muscle.
When focus exists only in our jobs or in crisis, it reveals one of our generation’s deepest sacrifices.
A mind aware of its distractions begins to recover its clarity, and with it, its freedom.
