In a World of Cheap Dopamine Hits, Focus Is the New Superpower

That's why reading more long-form content was my number one New Year's resolution in 2025.

Art using GoEnhance AI

I used to read a lot. I’m trying to get back to that.

My number one resolution for 2025 is to read 20 new books.

In 2024, I could count the books I finished on one hand. There were a lot of books I started but abandoned quickly.

I told myself it was because these books didn’t grab my attention. The truth was, I was losing my ability to read long-form. I was losing my ability to focus.

The data shows that I’m not the only one.

• A Gallup survey found the average adult read about 12.6 books in 2021 – the lowest level since 1990, and about 2-3 fewer books per year than in the early 2000s.

• Young people are reading even less. Surveys of high schoolers show a sharp generational shift: in the late 1970s, about 60% of high school seniors read a newspaper, magazine, or book daily; by the mid-2010s, that number had plummeted to only 16%.

The decrease in long-form reading coincides with the rise of the Internet and social media. The Internet has turned us into scanners, not readers.

Short-form reading like texting and X posts has replaced long-form reading. This type of short-form content gives us quick dopamine hits that keep us in an endless doom scroll.

We’re not actually retaining much or becoming more informed. We’re just chasing the next dopamine hit.

We’re Getting Dumber

Our eroding ability to focus on long form content is making us all dumber.

In the 20th century, IQ rose dramatically, a phenomenon named the Flynn effect.

In the last couple of years, we’ve been experiencing the “reverse Flynn effect” where IQ levels have been dropping.

• From roughly 1930 to 1990, IQ test scores globally increased by about 3 points per decade, thanks to improvements in education, nutrition, and learning environments. However, many nations have since seen plateauing or declining IQ scores.

• A 2023 study by Northwestern University researchers found IQ decreases using online assessment data from 394,000 adults (2006–2018). They observed declining scores in 3 of 4 cognitive domains – namely verbal reasoning, logical reasoning (matrix problems), and numeric series – across all age and education groups.

What’s driving the reverse Flynn effect? No one can say for sure.

I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to say social media is playing a huge role.

Shrinking Attention Spans

The constant bombardment of digital stimulation is eroding our attention spans.

• A famous study by Microsoft Corp. reported that the average human attention span dropped from 12 seconds in around 2000 to only 8 seconds by 2013, which is shorter than that of a goldfish (about 9 seconds). I’m sure it’s even shorter in 2025.

• An experiment in the mid-2000s on continuous interruptions from emails found that the “relentless barrage” of messages temporarily knocked participants’ IQ down by an average of 10 points – a worse effect than smoking marijuana!

• Research teams from Harvard, Oxford, King’s College London, and others have found evidence of reduced gray matter among people with high internet use or digital multitasking.

It all ties together. If one’s attention is constantly splintered by the Internet’s cornucopia of cheap dopamine hits, then one’s ability to engage in deep work will suffer.

Here’s the worst part: not only are we losing the ability to concentrate, our environment is also making us crave cheap dopamine.

This leads to a vicious cycle. Shorter attention spans crave bite-sized content, which further reinforces the consumption of bite-sized content.

Final Thoughts

Here’s the funny thing: the Internet gives us access to more information than previous generations could ever dream of, yet it’s making us dumber.

That doesn’t mean I think the Internet is a bad thing. I’m no Luddite.

I think the Internet is a valuable tool, but it’s like any other tool. It can be used wisely, or it can be used poorly. Most of us use it poorly by bombarding ourselves with quick dopamine hits.

My solution isn’t to do a digital detox. My solution is to train myself to strengthen my focus by consuming more long-form content instead of low-form junk food for the mind.

In the future, the ability to focus will become a superpower. Those who have that ability will be wildly successful. Those who can’t will become the easily manipulated consumer cogs exploited by the people who can focus.