I HAVE used the following phrase myself on a number of occasions down the years, in the spirit of a gentle poking of fun at an acquaintance or colleague who has displayed scatterbrained or forgetful tendencies.

But now it seems that to declare that "he/she/you has/have the attention span of a goldfish" in fact indicates a mental capacity that is, in the increasingly tech-dominated 21st Century, something to be proud of.

For it seems that the more we become slaves to our smartphones, tablets, or whatever new-fangled digital device takes our fancy, the less capable we are of concentrating on any one subject for more than a few seconds.

Eight seconds, to be more precise. That is the conclusion reached following research carried out by digi-giant Microsoft.

Two thousand Canadians were monitored while playing games online to try to determine their attention levels, while a further 112 people had their brain activity mapped by undergoing a procedure called an electroencephalogram.

The latter, from what I can discover, involves kitting people out with those swimming cap-like devices, to which are attached dozens of probes so they end up looking like a modern-day Medusa, and through which nothing that goes on in their brains goes unnoticed.

Quite how through this study, the conclusion is reached that an average human attention span is now eight seconds escapes me, though maybe that is because I no longer have - or have never had - the concentration levels required to grasp the complexities of the process.

Also unexplained, is how it is considered that a goldfish has an average attention span of nine seconds, though that may be down to some previous piece of fascinating research.

If the Microsoft study is right however, then we humans have surely to do some serious recalibrating of our lives.

This column has bemoaned on many previous occasions the seemingly inexorable march of digital and other technologies that make available at the press of a few buttons just about any piece of information we require, however obscure.

This latest column too, is also being written through the medium of one of these pieces of technology, that every now and then displays without prompt a precis of an e-mail message just received.

My personal and work phones too, regularly bleep and squawk to inform me that I have received a text message, or a tweet, or that some of the people I am already following on Twitter have tweeted something of such great importance that it is vital I know about at once (they invariably have not).

All of which traffic disrupts the flow of what I am doing, or catches me off guard so that I find myself drawn to investigating a snippet of information that in reality I couldn't care less about.

Clearly, this overload of information has a considerable part to play in the diminution of our attention spans, which may have fallen from 12 seconds just a few years ago, based on a comparison of a previous study and the Microsoft findings.

Having given the issue as much attention as I can muster, I can think of only two alternatives - either goldfish are getting smarter, or the powers of concentration of Canadians are collectively shortening, but those of the rest of the world are generally OK.

Seriously though, and back to the Microsoft study, it also apparently found evidence of "addiction-like behaviours" among smartphone users in relation to how they use their phones.

And surely this is the most worrying thing - that a small piece of technology that the vast majority of us now carry with us at all times, pretty much like we carry about loose change or keys, has begun to control our minds to the extent that our instinct every few minutes is to check it for messages, or text a friend, or check the latest news.

Provide people with the technology capable of delivering instant communication, and it seems we will pretty soon fundamentally alter our living habits to accommodate it.

And of course, corporations like Microsoft will happily provide it for us, so it is probably in their interest for us to have smaller attention spans.

The research it has carried out will probably have its senior executives smiling broadly as they stare through the glass of their office aquariums at the fish within - creatures that are slowly starving because in the time it takes to cross from desk to tank to feed them, their guardians have been distracted.