Mass media and the internet have caused people s attention spans to get shorter However the overall effect has been positive while people are less able to focus on one thing they more than make up for it with an enhanced ability to sort through large

Though multitasking has increased our ability to sort information from multiple sources it has also contributed to decreasing people's attention and concentration levels as this continuous switching from one place to another doesn't allow us to focus completely on one thing at a time.

What these media and internet do is that it keeps on popping our mobile phones or laptops with endless notifications.
While these notifications come from multiple sources it doesn't allow us to focus on the thing we are doing right now.
We have seen how a particular sound of messages in the Facebook app makes us want to check who messaged us, a notification from Youtube might want us to check what was uploaded. A piece of Breaking news might want us to check what happened and so on.
Thus this continuous switching from one app to another or from one notification to another leads to breaking our efficiency of concentrating on one thing at a time.

Moreover, we are also provided with the option to skip the intro or move 10sec fast all these add up to creating a feel for skipping what's in the moment to where we might find something that would trigger/excite us. The scientists have named this phenomenon as dopamine triggers. These notifications, breaking news skipping of video multi switching between the apps create a dopamine rush and decrease our ability to focus on the normal or present ongoing situation.

While this has also lead to increasing our ability to sort through large quantities of information and helping us find what is important for us. What it does under the hood is that it divides our concentration on more than one thing and allows us to get small part of the information from multiple sources.

Thus mass media and the internet have caused people's attention spans to get shorter on one thing by shifting our concentration levels from one task to breaking it to multiple and enhancing the ability to sort large information making our jack of all and master of none.