Gadgets, Information Overload and Human Attention: A Narrative Review of the Psychological Evidence

Notifications, feeds and constant connectivity are widely said to fragment attention, impair memory and mood, and even change brain structure. Some of these claims are well supported, others rest on single studies or on correlations. This narrative review examines experimental studies, meta-analyses, registered replications and key neuroimaging and sleep studies. Each claim in an earlier draft was traced to its primary source and graded by the strength of the evidence behind it. The best-supported findings are that notifications and interruptions disrupt ongoing tasks, that returning to interrupted work takes long (about 23 to 25 minutes in one field study, although that interval includes time spent on other work), and that reading informational text on screen yields a small comprehension disadvantage (g = −0.21). Evidence is mixed for the effects of heavy media multitasking and of a phone’s mere presence, and weak for brain-structure and adolescent well-being claims (at most 0.4% of variance in well-being). Mindfulness training shows small to moderate cognitive benefits, digital detox results are inconsistent. Attentional fragmentation is a real but narrower problem than popular accounts suggest. Practical advice should rest on interruption control and sleep protection rather than on claims of neural decline.