You open your eyes, you wake up and what is the first thing you do?

Probably check some notification, or even worse, start scrolling through any "social network", one new notification after another and another and another. (I don't know why it's called a social network, when the people you interact with on those networks neither help you, nor do you meet up with them; the word network is fine, but the word "social"?).

Worst of all, this habit of looking at notifications has been normalized. This habit is destroying you from the inside.

We have selected several articles where researchers classified two types of people:

1. People who don't switch context much (LMM)
2. People who switch context a lot (let's call them "zombies")

Context switching means people who do several things at once, like watching TV, listening to music, replying to messages, etc. It's also related to what's known as "scrolling", which is having a continuous flow of new notifications. (I'm not going to name apps, but I'm sure many come to mind with that description).

Zombies don't filter

What was seen in this study is very curious. The "zombies" filter information very poorly. How did they measure this? They selected an exercise where you always see 2 red rectangles, and you have to tell if they have changed position or not. To make it harder, 0, 2, 4, 6 blue rectangles are added as distractor elements. Want to try?

What they saw was that the "zombies", as distractor elements increased, failed more at recognizing whether the red rectangles had changed or not. The LMM, on the other hand, when the number of distractors was increased, showed no significant difference.

The "zombies" have lost the ability to concentrate! What does this mean in practice? That when they are about to do a task, they get distracted easily because they have lost the ability to filter relevant information and they pay attention to everything. They have lost the ability to focus their attention on a few elements.

Zombies wander from one side to another, their attention is scattered everywhere, everything is relevant and therefore nothing is relevant. Zombies do not focus their attention on what they want. They move without direction, that's why they are zombies.

Zombies don't retain

In this study they did exercises similar to the one above, but instead of using only red rectangles they used objects like ships, planes, etc. And they measured how working memory worked (at attention-read.com we explain in detail what working memory is and, best of all, how to improve it).

What was interesting was that, after several exercises, they did one last exercise asking participants to recognize which objects they had seen and which they hadn't. And the "zombies" recognized fewer objects.

In other words, "zombies" see the information but don't digest it, don't retain it, and it makes a lot of sense, because they don't focus their attention.

The implications of this are very worrying: the "zombies" learn worse since they don't retain, they wander through life remembering less and less of what they have lived. Don't worry if a zombie notices you today, tomorrow they will have forgotten.

Zombies always want more

In this study they observed what happens in the body of the "zombies" that makes them want to switch content while browsing the internet.

To measure changes in the body they used a sensor placed on the skin and saw that, in the first 12 seconds of new content, conductance increased (the "zombies" were sweating very slightly), reached a peak right at the moment of the switch, and dropped very quickly with the new stimulus.

The study was conducted in 2014 and participants switched every 19 seconds on average; if they did it now, in all likelihood 19 seconds would be the record of the best of the "zombies" or, better said, of the worst of the "zombies".

The interesting thing about this study is that the "zombies" felt relief when switching content; in fact, we can see that zombies, when they get bored, immediately take out their phone to look at something.

The next time you're in a boring situation and you see someone take out their phone, be careful: there's a zombie nearby. If you do it, you know you've become a zombie.

How are zombie children created?

As if that weren't enough, the 21st-century tobacco industry isn't satisfied with having adult zombies; it is also invading the most vulnerable, children.

In this study a correlation was seen between screen hours and lower white matter integrity. "Lower white matter integrity" means that specific regions of the brain (brain regions such as speech) are less efficient at transporting the electrical signal from neurons. Children with worse connections is not something any society wants.

Correlation does not imply causality, but if a child is in front of a screen without moving, without interacting, without asking questions, without getting bored, without imagining, is he using his brain? Worse still, is he living?

How to stop being a zombie?

This habit of screens, of constant and changing stimulus, turns us into consumers, but not into generators.

If we only consume information and don't reflect, recall, mix, create information, our brain will become less and less agile, it will have learned to put in less effort. But, much worse, we won't be living the life we want to live, because we won't be paying attention to the things we want.

The 21st-century tobacco industries have studied the world of habits a lot and they know that with continuous stimulation the habit feeds back on itself and becomes harder to break. Habits have these phases:

1. Cue
2. Craving
3. Action
4. Reward

In the case of screens, the cue is generated when there is a situation of discomfort or boredom. The craving is that feeling the zombie has when they want to see something to end that boredom, that "suffering". The action is looking at the phone, and the reward is the feeling of relief from having ended the boredom.

For zombies, new content generates boredom within seconds; the industry knows this and that's why they show another new notification/piece of information, so the zombies keep going in their loop.

Every time you behave like a zombie, think about it: you are in their loop, you didn't choose it; all they want is to turn you into a zombie and keep you continuously on their platform, the maximum number of hours.

To break the habit of being a zombie, you must first be aware of when you feel that cue or that craving, when you feel that need to look at the screen. By being aware you can stop the habit cycle. Once you detect it, try to create another habit that you want.

One way to get off the zombie path is to do activities that don't resemble it. These are some interesting activities.

• socialize (for real, with people of flesh and blood)
• play (team sports are a perfect activity; they combine exercise and social component)
• face difficult problems
• meditate
• train at attention-read.com
• walk without a phone
• get bored

There are many things you can do, but the idea is to train your attention so it is where you want it to be; in your mind only you should enter, not the attention industry.

Train your mind.

Make your mind stronger than yesterday.