We spend an average of just 47 seconds on any screen before shifting our attention. It takes 25 minutes to bring our attention back to a task after an interruption. And we interrupt ourselves more than we're interrupted by others. In Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity, psychologist Gloria Mark, Ph.D. reveals these and more surprising results from her decades of research into how technology affects our attention.

Based on decades of original research in what Prof. Mark calls “living laboratories,” where she studies technology use in people’s real-world environments, Attention Span not only presents the science of exactly how short our attention spans have become, how much we’re interrupted and how much stress that causes us, but also how we can gain control of our attention and achieve wellbeing.

Prof. Mark is Chancellor’s Professor Emerita at the University of California, Irvine, and has been a visiting senior researcher at Microsoft Research since 2012. For over two decades she has studied the impact of digital media on people's lives, focusing on how using our devices affects our multitasking, distractions, mood, and behavior.  She has also been a Fulbright scholar and has received the prestigious NSF Career grant.

Prof. Mark will be in conversation with David Epstein (FAN ’16 and ’20), a science writer and author of the New York Times bestsellers Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, and The Sports Gene. Epstein was previously an investigative reporter at ProPublica, and prior to that a senior writer at Sports Illustrated. His two TED Talks on human development and performance have been viewed 12 million times.