Something that takes your attention away from what you're supposed to be doing, or the state of having your attention pulled in different directions.
From Latin distractus, past participle of distrahere meaning 'to pull apart,' from dis- 'apart' and trahere 'to pull.' The word literally describes being pulled away from focus.
Your smartphone is engineered to be addictive—every notification, vibration, and red dot is designed to trigger the same dopamine response as gambling, which is why distractions feel so hard to resist and why multitasking actually makes you worse at everything.
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