We’ve all been there: Sitting in class, writing up a report, or logged on to the virtual meeting and struggling to stay engaged. Maybe you have a go-to method of dealing with it. Perhaps you’re a doodler, a pen clicker, a paperclip bender, or a hair twirler. You might’ve even invested in a fidget spinner in the hopes it would help keep you on task. So does all that fiddling really help with focus?
It turns out, the answer isn’t so straightforward, according to science. For some people, in some contexts, certain types of fidgeting can help with concentration. But the wrong combo could actually hurt your ability to pay attention. “There’s lots of different parameters to it,” says Julie Schweitzer, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at UC Davis where she studies attention and fidgeting.
In her research, she’s found that people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are more prone to natural or intrinsic movements (think repetitive finger wiggling, foot tapping, or swaying) than their neurotypical counterparts, when faced with demanding cognitive work. And that this sort of movement does seem to assist in boosting concentration on the task at hand. Both children and adults diagnosed with ADHD who engage in more intrinsic movements (measured with devices placed on the wrists and ankles) during a task perform better, based on two separate studies involving dozens of participants.
“This is a hypothesis, but we think it’s a way of unconsciously boosting alertness and arousal,” says Schweitzer. “It probably has something to do with the areas of the brain and neurotransmitters involved in motor function,” which are generally faster to develop in those with ADHD than other cognitive regions. By stimulating hormones that keep us awake, like norepinephrine–a close relative to adrenaline–fidgeting may help certain people maintain attentional equilibrium or engage more of their brain overall. In this way, fidgeting via natural movements both seems to be a symptom of boredom and a way of alleviating it.
However, the same doesn’t necessarily hold true in those without an attention disorder. In another study comparing neurotypical adolescents and those with ADHD, “we didn’t see that [fidgeting] had any demonstrable effect in the typically developing,” Schweitzer says. “But that’s under-explored, and I think needs to be investigated more broadly to see if it’s true,” she adds.
For certain work that requires maintaining alertness over long periods, select versions of fidgeting may become helpful, even for those without ADHD. For instance, she brings up the anecdotal example of truckers chewing gum to stay alert on long drives. “I think many people are doing this sort of thing without even realizing it,” Schweitzer tells Popular Science. And though neurotypical people and those with an attention disorder like ADHD can respond to stimuli differently, it’s not black and white. “ADHD appears on a continuum… you can have degrees of symptoms,” Schweitzer tells Popular Science.
Yet no matter who’s fidgeting, some methods may not be the best idea. There’s been an explosion of different fidget and sensory toys over the past few years. Chief among them has been the fidget spinner–hated by classroom teachers and adored by a subset of Zoomers and Generation Alpha. The flick-to-rotate device is often marketed with claims that it can help boost focus, but many scientific studies have found otherwise.
“We didn’t see any evidence of benefits and in fact we saw evidence of memory impairments associated with using a fidget [spinner],” says Julia Soares, a cognitive scientist and assistant professor of psychology at Mississippi State University. In a 2019 study co-authored by Soares, she found college students experienced an average of an 11 percent impairment in their ability to remember details of a video when using a fidget spinner versus not. Another study of young children with ADHD similarly found that fidget spinners had a negative influence on attention and classroom function. A third analysis also concluded that fidget spinners (and doodling) can reduce cognitive performance among students. Finally, a 2022 review assessing multiple studies found some evidence that fidget spinners and other sensory toys may help with emotional regulation or stress, but concluded, “the literature suggests that the negative effects of fidget toys on attention and learning outweigh potential sensory benefits,” in a classroom setting.
“This isn’t necessarily to say that fidgeting or using fidget objects impairs learning for every single individual,” says Soares–but it does indicate that fidget spinners probably aren’t the best bet for improved focus. For one, they’re noisy and visually appealing–which means users may be more tempted to engage with the toy than the task, she explains. Schweitzer adds that spinners don’t actually require repetitive motion to rotate continually, and so they might not encourage or replicate the type of intrinsic movement her research has identified as helpful.
Though fidgeting isn’t an exact science, nor a one-size-fits-all solution, and science hasn’t exactly figured out the most ideal fidgeting strategy, both Scweitzer and Soares have some suggestions for how one might maximize their focus. For one, try to avoid any type of fidgeting that would prevent or distract you from doing the work you need to do. If you’re supposed to be writing or taking notes, don’t engage the hand you need to do that with in another task. If you have to pay attention to a video or visual cues, don’t do something that will draw your eyes away. If you’re in a social setting, be aware of how your actions are impacting others, says Schweitzer.
Then, test things out and see how they go. Participants in Soares’ study recognized when their attention and memory was impaired. In other words, they had “metacognitive awareness,” implying that people may be able to reliably evaluate if they’re distracted or not. If you’re using a fidget device, be honest with yourself in assessing how or if it’s impacting your ability to work. If you find that doodling has become more absorbing than your company meeting, consider recalibrating. And if you’re not so sure, you can always try timing yourself on a task, or quantitatively measuring productivity, says Schweitzer.
Finally, concentration is a balancing act. It’s hard to stay focused on tough tasks, and we can’t do it indefinitely. The brain requires breaks. If fidgeting doesn’t help you, pausing, stepping away from work, or mixing up your task might. “Even in my lab meetings, after a while, we get up and stretch.” And sometimes certain distractions are compromises worth making. If using a fidget spinner or playing with silly putty during a virtual meeting keeps your computer cursor from wandering over to Wikipedia or YouTube, then it’s probably worth incurring the meager attention losses to maintain some degree of focus, says Soares. “I think there are definitely specific situations where people would benefit from fidgeting, where they might get more off task doing other things,” she says. Compared with all of the attention our digital devices demand, fidget toys are likely the lesser evil.
This story is part of Popular Science’s Ask Us Anything series, where we answer your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the ordinary to the off-the-wall. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.
