Welcome 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 is 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.

It'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.

But 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 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

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