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Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has strong words for young professionals: Stop relying on your phones. In a recent Moonshots podcast episode, Schmidt emphasized that constant digital noise prevents deep thinking. “You can't think deeply as a researcher with this thing buzzing,” he said.
Schmidt didn't hesitate to call out the tech industry for the current attention crisis. He noted that companies have intentionally designed products to monetize user attention, flooding daily life with alerts, ads, and entertainment. “They want to consume all of your waking hours,” he warned.
Supporting Schmidt’s concerns, attention researcher Gloria Mark has found a sharp drop in how long people focus on screens. In 2004, users could concentrate for 2.5 minutes; today, it’s down to just 47 seconds.
Schmidt was particularly critical of meditation apps that promise calm but still demand screen time. “My favorite are these digital apps that make you relax,” he said sarcastically. “The correct thing to do is to turn off your phone, right? And then relax in a traditional way.”
However, not everyone agrees with Schmidt. Calm responded by saying ‘not all screen time is created equal,’ and Headspace’s chief clinical officer, Dr. Jenna Glover, countered that simply telling people to turn off phones is ‘not realistic or helpful.’
Although phones have provided faster means of connection, the constant stream of notifications and fragmented information is concerning. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's perspective on the same highlights the problems related to perpetual digital engagement, pointing out the detrimental impact on the formation of robust neural pathways essential for complex problem-solving. Whether it will soon become a work rule of the future remains to be seen.
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