According to the researchers, many digital platforms are designed to provide immediate rewards for minimal effort. Infinite scroll, algorithmically curated content and constant notifications may, over time, reinforce habits that make cognitively demanding activities—such as studying, sustained reading or solving complex problems—feel subjectively less attractive.
“The central idea of our paper is that repeated exposure to immediate, low-effort rewards may change how valuable our brain perceives cognitive effort to be. As a result, we may increasingly prefer activities that provide immediate gratification, even when dedicating ourselves to a more demanding task would be more beneficial in the long run,” explained Jaan Aru, Associate Professor of Computational Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence at the Institute of Computer Science of the University of Tartu.
The researchers refer to this process as effort recalibration. According to this framework, digital media do not necessarily reduce people's ability to concentrate. Rather, they may reshape the brain’s internal evaluation of how much cognitive effort is worth investing in a given task.
The paper argues that people constantly make decisions between different activities by weighing their expected rewards against the cognitive effort they require. When digital environments provide immediate access to rewarding new stimuli with minimal effort, they may gradually alter how people value cognitive effort. As a result, individuals may become less willing to persist with activities whose rewards emerge more slowly but are essential for acquiring durable knowledge and developing expertise. For example, learning at school requires building knowledge gradually over time, yet this process may become increasingly difficult if the brain becomes accustomed to receiving information in rapid, easily digestible fragments.
The authors relate this phenomenon to two fundamental learning strategies: exploration and exploitation. Exploration involves seeking new information and investigating different possibilities, whereas exploitation involves sustained engagement with existing knowledge to achieve mastery. Both strategies are essential, but acquiring complex skills ultimately requires prolonged focus on a single task. According to the researchers, digital media use may gradually shift this balance towards continuous exploration, making sustained engagement more difficult.
The paper proposes a new scientific framework that offers an alternative explanation for the mixed findings reported in previous research on digital media and cognition. According to Aru, the key question is not simply whether people are capable of concentrating, but when and for what they are willing to invest cognitive effort.
“One of the central debates surrounding digital media has been this: if digital media really have negative effects, why do we see so little evidence of them in laboratory studies measuring attention or memory? Our framework offers one possible explanation. In laboratory settings, people are generally able to maintain their attention when required. The real challenge may not lie in short cognitive tests, but in activities that demand sustained effort over much longer periods. This is precisely the mechanism we hope future research will investigate,” said Aru.
The authors argue that future research should focus less on whether digital media impair cognitive capacity and more on how they influence people’s willingness to invest cognitive effort in learning, work and other activities that require sustained attention over time.
The researchers call for experimental, neurobiological and longitudinal studies to test this hypothesis and better understand how digital environments shape people’s learning habits and patterns of sustained attention.
Nature Human Behaviour
Meta-analysis
Not applicable
An effort recalibration framework for digital media use and cognition
1-Jul-2026