We live in a technologically advanced world. Nowadays it’s common to have a smartphone on your person at pretty much all times. And societally, one of the big questions we’ve been grappling with is: how do we manage our attention spans?

A couple of years ago, a study out of Paderborn University in Germany invited a group of 20-34 year old participants to take an attention and concentration test.

Each participant took the test twice. In one trial, they had their smartphone next to them, face down and turned off. In the other, their phone was taken out of the room entirely.

Researchers found that when the phone was present, participants processed information more slowly. Suggesting that the mere presence of the phone consumed part of their mental bandwidth.

This year, another experiment was run in Greece, where slightly younger participants (aged 18-25) were invited to take a standardized Attention Network Test. It’s similar to the test from the previous experiment, but a little less complex and demanding.

For this test, participants were divided into 3 groups with three separate situations:

Researchers found that there was no difference in the attention of the three groups. Which came as a bit of a surprise to me, having read the first study.

But the researchers pointed out that younger adults may be more desensitized in the presence of phones than older generations.

More research exists out there about the presence of our phones and our cognitive abilities.

What do we make of all this?

We need to shift the conversation from focusing on the device to what we do with it. To what our relationship is with it.

Does taking a phone out and leaving it on your desk make you anxious? It might. But that says less about the phone and more about what you expect from it. The boundaries you set.

If you want to reclaim your attention, it helps to focus less on whether the phone is in the room and more on the patterns you’ve built around it. The studies all point to the same underlying truth: our habits and expectations shape our focus more than the device itself. And a few intentional boundaries can go a long way toward giving your attention some space to breathe again.

Let’s bring some mindfulness to our digital life.

Try This: I want you to spend the rest of the day taking note of every time you check your phone. What are you doing? And how does it make you feel? If you can do this for a few days, that’s even better. Think of it like a phone diary.

When you’re done taking notes, I want you to look over it. And ask: what’s making me feel good? And what’s not?

How are you going to change your behavior to favor the good feelings, and reduce the bad ones?