You have probably heard that recent surveys report teachers reshaping lessons around what they describe as “very short attention spans“. Concerns about attention spans in schools dominate staffroom conversations, blaming the ever-swiping nature of social media.

It sounds reasonable. It sounds evidence based. At the same time, it does something else that is easy to miss. It places the problem somewhere out there; on their phones, on their feeds, on their generation.

We talk about TikTok today as if it is a new catastrophe, but every generation of adults has had its own attention-span villain. In the 80s it was TV that supposedly “shortened children’s attention spans”. In the 90s, it was the Nintendo and MTV generation, their brains apparently rewired by fast cuts and joysticks. The children change, the tech changes, but the diagnosis is always the same: kids these days just cannot focus.

The story behind the “evidence”

If you have ever written an essay or a dissertation, you know the drill. You begin with your question. Next, you explain the limitations of your study. You end by saying what further questions you would ask next time. Finally, you acknowledge that your findings are shaped by the question you chose, the way you collected data, and what you decided to count as important.

Educational research is no different. Every report is restricted by the question it starts with.

If you begin with “How is social media detrimental to attention spans in schools?”, you’ve already decided where the problem sits. It does not ask, “What in our schooling practices might be affecting attention?” or “How do children experience focus and interest across their whole day?”

You are walking through a forest that has a river running through the middle. You choose a route that never goes near water, interviewing other people who walked the same path. At the end you publish a paper that confidently concludes there is no river in this forest. You have “evidence”. You also have a very incomplete picture.

When we stop there and call it evidence based, we act as if the question was neutral. It was not. It was soaked in assumption from the start.

The other story we never tell

Let us flip the script for a moment. Imagine a different research question.

Instead of asking, “How is social media shrinking attention spans?”, we ask:

“How might our push for consistency and scripting be eroding young people’s attention?”

In many schools, lessons are now tightly standardised. We start English the same way we start maths. Mini whiteboards get used in the same way in every subject. Identical call-and-response routines structure every lesson.

We often justify this in the name of “supporting neurodiverse learners” or “reducing cognitive load”. There is some truth in that. Predictability can be stabilising. Routines can be grounding.

But there is another side. When you already know exactly how every lesson will unfold, how much attention do you really need to pay? If the pattern in maths is the pattern in English and science and history, how easy is it to mentally check out while your body stays compliant in the chair?

If we wanted to, we could design a study to “prove” that hyper-scripted lessons are destroying attention spans in schools. We could track engagement across a day where every lesson looks the same. Our study could interview young people who tell us it all blurs into one. We could quote thinkers like Paulo Freire and Sir Ken Robinson on dialogical, inquiry-based learning.

We could package that up so it sounds like the new evidence base.

Here is the point. Both stories can be made to sound scientific. They can both find “data”. Both have glaring holes. At some level both are what we at Class 13 would call pseudoscience.

The difference is what they invite us to do.

Pseudoscience as deficit ideology

Pseudoscience is one of the six characteristics of deficit ideology. It describes the use of research and data to support deficit assumptions about certain groups.

In this case we see it in headlines about “screen addicted teens” damaging attention spans in schools and “parents who do not care”. It shows up in narrow studies that only look in one direction, and in conclusions that simply confirm the original worry.

The key move is always the same. The deficiency is located in the young person. Not in staffing levels, curriculum design, or the way we use power.

Once we have a neat story about their brains being rewired by social media, the possibility of change is out of our control. Change sits with social media platforms and their algorithms, or with parents restricting phone time. In the meantime, we carry on.

One story gets us off the hook. The other gives us work to do.

The social media story says: young people’s attention is broken before they reach us. The fix is out there. On their screens. In their homes. In Silicon Valley.

The scripting story, if we took it seriously, would force us to look in the mirror.

This might mean asking:

• Do our routines support attention or just control?
  
• Have we confused compliance with curiosity?
  
• What would it take to make this lesson worth paying attention to?
  

It might even push us into “wild” territory. Extra PPA time. Shared planning that treats curriculum as something creative, not just something to deliver. Collaborative experiments with inquiry-based learning, dialogical teaching, and project work that actually matters to young people’s lives. Class 13 works with schools to build these practices—not as bolt-on interventions, but as fundamental shifts in how we understand teaching, learning, and power. [Learn more about our training.]

One story gets us off the hook.
The other gives us options we can try, test, and iterate.

Naming ourselves as the barrier is not an attack

There is a sentence I think belongs in every staffroom conversation:

“In what ways might I be a barrier to this young person’s learning?”

That question is not a dig at educators. It is an invitation. When we place ourselves in the frame, we create possibility. We move from blame to agency.

Saying “the problem is TikTok” leaves you waiting for an external fix. Saying “some of our practices might be dulling attention” opens up countless changes you can experiment with tomorrow.

This is not about heroic individual teachers rewriting the system on their own. Schools are structured in ways that crush creativity and push everyone towards the banking model of education. Teachers feel this as much as young people do. Many of the staff we meet do not like the formulaic way teaching has become. They are exhausted by it. They feel de-skilled by it.

That is exactly why naming pseudoscience matters. When we see how “evidence” is being used to pin the problem on children, we can decide not to play along.

Questions to take into the new term

If January is supposed to be a fresh start, let it be a fresh start in how we think about evidence and attention spans in schools. Before we quote a study or repeat a headline, we might try asking:

• What question did this research start with?
• Who does this explanation let off the hook?
• If this story is true, what becomes possible?
• And if it’s true, what becomes impossible?
• What might we learn if we assumed young people are not broken, and looked at the system instead?
  

Pseudoscience in education is not just fake facts. It is any story that dresses up deficit assumptions as neutral truth and keeps power exactly where it already sits.

We do not have to accept that.

Next time you hear, or feel, the urge to say “they just cannot focus any more”, pause. Notice whose behaviour you are scrutinising. Notice where the supposed solution sits.

Then ask, quietly and honestly:

What might I change, in my classroom, my planning, or my policies, to make attention a form of shared curiosity rather than enforced compliance?

You will not fix the forest in a term. You might not reach the river straight away. But you can refuse to pretend it is not there. And you can choose the stories, and the evidence, that give you somewhere real to walk.