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Buried in the controversial report on grade inflation at Harvard, Dean of the Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh alluded to a far more serious problem.

She warns that today’s students arrive on campus with less experience reading complex prose and a weaker capacity for sustained focus. She suggests that these are the casualties of high school reforms and a changing media culture — presumably TikTok and short-form video content.

She’s right. But what’s alarming is that universities are only now starting to recognize the changes that have reshaped how we learn, think, and live.

A number of studies have shown that cellphones and short-form video content have eroded our attention spans. One infamous study from Microsoft Corp. found that the average attention span has decreased from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight seconds by 2013.

Even more concerning, the report found that those who use multiple screens are less capable of filtering out irrelevant stimuli and are more easily distracted.

But we don’t need studies to understand this reality. I would bet all the money in my pockets ($12) that every student on campus has once complained, or heard a friend complain, about their destroyed attention span.

Myself included. I am addicted to my cellphone. It’s hard to know how much time I’ve spent on my phone in college — or worse, over the course of my life. But it is in moments of boredom, no matter how fleeting — waiting for class to start, standing in line for a coffee — that I will involuntarily, unconsciously, and happily pull out my phone.

In the last three weeks, I have tried to go cold turkey. Two people in the world — my sister and my blockmate — know the screen time passcode on my phone. I cannot access Instagram, TikTok, or the app formerly known as Twitter.

I’ve tried every way to get past these defenses, but I can’t. I can’t guess the passcode, I’ve even blocked distracting websites on Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and yes, DuckDuckGo. My phone is now functionally a fortress meant to protect me from myself.

I can’t be the only one. So we must ask: How can a university built for reading, reflection, and slow thinking survive this onslaught on our collective attention spans?

Cellphones should have put this University — and universities everywhere — on DEFCON 1, realizing that they were now going to have to compete with the most entertaining and addictive invention in human history.

It is good that the College is recognizing the broader problems with student engagement and is committed to addressing them, and re-centering academics. The College should take steps to encourage students to take a grounded, slow, disconnected approach during our four years here.

I’ve tried imagining interventions administrators could take: Blocking distracting websites on University WiFi, shutting down the WiFi after 10 p.m., banning cellphones in dining halls, lecture halls, and libraries. But any policy that extends itself beyond the classroom and into our free time — where we really need the most help — would make the Vietnam protests look like a picnic.

Rightfully so. I am always skeptical of the College trying to “nudge” (or outright control) our behavior. No matter how much they encourage us to put away the phones, nothing will work until we decide that we want to spend more time at Harvard than on our phones. If we want to do something about our collective addiction, we are going to have to do it ourselves.

I’ve been more productive and focused in the last three weeks because I’ve tried my best to avoid screens. I’ve also been more present and able to enjoy my day-to-day college experience.

So have a friend act as a screen time monitor. Commit to taking paper notes in class. Buy the flip phone. Print your readings.

If we can’t relearn how to be bored, how to read deeply, or how to sit in silence, then the kind of education Harvard promises will vanish, too. A university can’t survive if its students can’t pay attention.

Because no amount of Bs or attendance quizzes is going to make us put the damn phone away.

S. Mac Healey ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Social Studies concentrator in Lowell House.