One afternoon, I was installing a custom Rom on my phone. Even though it was a 2024 model, it still only had USB 2.0, so data transfer was painfully slow—and I had a lot to back up and restore. Dinner time rolled around and the job still wasn’t done, but I had to eat, so I went to the cafeteria without my phone. Instead of the usual hot-food line, I chose the order–wait–pick-up counter.
Those ten minutes waiting for my food are etched in my memory. I had barely sat down when I realized I had nothing to do.
What should I do? Chat with the person next to me? In today’s world that would be seen as odd. Close my eyes and practice mindfulness? Also likely to be seen as odd. So I resorted to watching the people eating in the cafeteria. I noticed that people who had come alone—whether waiting or already eating—were almost all staring at their phones. Those who came with friends or partners were, of course, eating and chatting. I couldn’t keep my gaze on any one person for too long, because if they noticed, that could also be seen as odd. So I kept letting my eyes flit from person to person. Even so, if someone caught me doing that, it too might be seen as odd. In the end I lowered my head and stared at the tabletop in front of me, trying to make myself think about something—before long, my number was called. I was released from this predicament.
In the end I had to admit: going to the cafeteria without my phone had already made me the odd one out, and nothing I did could change that. Of course, in recalling it later I’ve sprinkled on a bit of egocentrism, because almost certainly no one noticed my little situation; they were either busy staring at their phones or talking to the people beside them. How many would be observing others the way I was?
This feeling of helplessness had two causes: first, a habitual behavior of mine suddenly became impossible; second, not looking at my phone in the cafeteria made me stand out—and I noticed myself standing out.
I’ve built the habit of looking at my phone while waiting for food, but not while actually eating. If you observe almost any university cafeteria or any place where lots of people dine alone, you’ll find most people eat while looking at their phones. And most are watching videos—usually shows or other longer videos, not short-form like Douyin/TikTok—because short videos require frequent tapping, and your hands are busy eating. Some people call this kind of content “electronic zhacai,” a slang term likening it to a cheap, salty side dish you mindlessly munch on.
It reminds me of when I was a kid: my family would often tell me to eat properly and stop watching the TV beside the table. Now, no one reminds you, and no one turns off the TV—so people do as they please. But how will these people educate their own children one day?
I wonder whether most people have already lost the ability to simply eat. I should confess first: when I was renting in the U.S., if I ate in my room rather than the living room, I had the habit of watching YouTube on my computer while eating. And now, if I order takeout and eat in my dorm, I’ll continue that habit. Largely that’s because I just happen to be facing my computer while eating. But I truly have never formed the habit of watching videos on my phone while I eat, and I find that behavior baffling.
You might immediately retort: “Oh! You watch a computer screen while you eat; other people watch their phones while they eat—what’s the difference? Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black? Isn’t it all ‘electronic zhacai’?”
To a large extent, that retort is fair. It’s like a PC esports player looking down on a mobile esports player. They may feel they occupy a higher rung, but to people uninterested in esports, aren’t both just gaming and neglecting real work? So when I say most people have lost the ability to eat attentively, I certainly include myself. I just think my degree of impairment is a bit lower: in cafeterias or restaurants I always eat attentively, and if I’m not positioned right in front of a computer, I wouldn’t watch YouTube while eating.
Since realizing this, I’ve been more deliberate about tasting my food when I eat in the cafeteria. I believe I, too, suffer from scattered attention and have trouble sustaining focus on one thing, so I don’t have the right to pretend I’m above it all. But as I see it now, this problem is widespread, especially among young people who grew up in the era of social media. In the English-speaking world it’s been dubbed an “attention crisis,” referring to how people today struggle to stay focused amid constant distractions. Once in the library I saw a student open the Forest app on her phone—a tool that locks you out for a set time—and then immediately open her laptop and launch WeChat.
Scholars mostly focus on the phone as the medium rather than the computer, and that makes sense: the phone is certainly more damaging to attention than a computer. According to a widely circulated claim, the average human attention span was about 12 seconds in 2000, and by 2013 it was only 8 seconds. Now that Instagram, TikTok/Douyin, and Xiaohongshu have deeply infiltrated daily life, what is people’s average attention span today?
Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at New York University, has in recent years been concerned about the mental health problems that phones and social media bring to children and adolescents, sounding the alarm loudly across major media. He suggests schools should ban phones and that teenagers under 16 should not have phones—especially not social media. Recently, on a program, he warned that long-term immersion in phones before age 25 could cause permanent changes in the prefrontal cortex, making change much harder afterward.
Although most of the attention is directed at adolescents, the problems among university students and working adults are also serious. University students were already deeply shaped by phones and social media as teens and brought those habits to college. In classrooms, many have laptops open—but how many can guarantee they are only taking notes or looking up materials, not doing something else? During the era of remote teaching under COVID-19, how many truly listened attentively?
When I was at the University of Virginia (UVA), I audited a social psychology course. The professor cautioned us to be careful with laptops in class, because once you open it, it’s hard to keep yourself from getting distracted. More importantly, when you’re doing something else on your computer, the classmate behind you can easily see your screen, which distracts them, and some of them then start doing other things on their own laptops—triggering a tsunami of lost attention.
At least among universities of similar caliber, American students’ level of engagement in class is far higher than that of Chinese students. At UVA, while a minority do other things on their computers, most sit upright and participate actively most of the time; in China, even students who manage not to drift off are mostly passively listening.
That said, Chinese university students can be highly engaged under certain conditions. As an undergraduate, my school was preparing to hire a German scholar as a visiting professor. He planned to offer a course first, and whether he would be hired depended largely on his impression of us students. The department took it very seriously: an associate professor who would serve as the TA gathered us before class to reason with us and appeal to us, urging everyone to participate actively—ask questions, voice opinions—and would often, after class and after the German professor had left, keep cheering us on. In the end, that course did become the one with the highest student participation of my undergraduate years, and I personally felt I benefited a great deal.
But that was an exception. A few months ago, American master photographer Stephen Shore gave a talk at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing, but left in anger halfway through when he found that most of the audience were on their phones and not listening at all. That, sadly, is the prevalent situation in China right now. Shore spoke in very harsh terms:
“I am gonna say something that i would apolpgize in advance because its gonna be rude. But it’s something on my mind as i experience the modern world. Since we are talking about attention, i think we understand each other. i think you understand the value of attending daily life. I saw at least a dozen of you who spent the entire lecture looking at your phones. You come here to hear a talk and you can’t even pay attention to the event you’ve come to listen to. How do you pay attention to the food you eat? Or the feel of the sun on your skin? I think it is a good place to stop.
Afterward, CAFA tried to save face by claiming the audience were using their phones to take notes. But anyone familiar with how deeply people in China are glued to their phones knows CAFA simply piled a lie on top of a mistake.
Whether students or working adults, these are legally adults, presumed to have full self-control, so almost no one imposes hard measures on them (like phone or social-media bans). Change is left to their own discipline. But how many people have that discipline? Just look at the folks eating while glued to their phones in the cafeteria.
Let’s be blunt: if a phone is sitting in front of you, most people’s willpower isn’t enough to resist its lure. Carrying your phone is like hanging a donut around your neck. People instinctively feel they might be missing something interesting and reach to unlock it and scroll. Some even buy smart bands or watches so they don’t miss any notifications—adding yet another source of interruption, this time strapped to the wrist.
The wise move, when you’re working, is to put your phone far away—at least out of sight—so you don’t get drawn into a willpower battle. For most people, physical separation is necessary; without it, nothing else works. And physical separation isn’t just a starting point—it’s for life. It’s said the U.S. Army infantry manual has a line: once you pull the pin on a grenade, it’s not your friend anymore. We might add: when you’re working, sleeping, in a meeting, in class, on a date, having sex, and so on—your phone is not your friend. Please toss it far away.
Both iOS and Android (AOSP) have Do Not Disturb modes; turn them on and notifications stop popping up. Windows PCs have multiple desktops, so you can stay on a work desktop and avoid other distractions. Android (AOSP) also has the system app Digital Wellbeing, which tracks your app usage—and stores data locally. Major Chinese Android variants may have similar system features, but whether they collect and upload user data is another question.
While Instagram and Twitter/X are distracting enough, the new breed—TikTok/Douyin and Xiaohongshu—are several times worse. They are “addiction by design,” built to keep users swiping endlessly like zombies through low-quality, irrelevant, and performative content. As an aside, I’m not a user of TikTok/Douyin or Xiaohongshu. I’ve installed them, but I might open them only once a week. Because I’m acutely aware of their “addiction by design,” I’ve kept myself from going deep from the start. I recommend that the discerning keep a healthy wariness toward these platforms—you might try to use them (but can you really?) without letting them use you.
In recent surveys, China ranks among the very top worldwide for time spent on phones; in some, it even ranks first. It’s fitting, perhaps, for the country that gave the world TikTok/Douyin and Xiaohongshu—and the country where people eat while glued to their phones. The sad part is that this still hasn’t drawn enough attention in China; no one talks about an “attention crisis,” as if no such crisis exists. Hegel said that to accomplish great things, one must pour one’s full attention into passion. Yet people are almost certain to enter—perhaps have already entered—an era of collapsed attention. The attention crisis may well be tied to the short-termism fashionable in our time. Are we prepared for that?
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