From the pianoforte to the smartphone, each wave of tech has sparked fears of brain rot. But the problem isn’t our ability to focus—it’s what we’re focussing on.
In a sense, what attention alarmists seek is protection from a competition that they’re losing.
What is doomscrolling if not avid reading? If people are failing to focus in some places, they’re clearly succeeding in others.
This is like saying channel surfing (flipping through Netflix or whatever videos but never picking one) is focus.
It continues:
One place they’re succeeding is cinema, which is in a baroque phase. A leading Golden Globe winner this year, “The Brutalist,” exceeds three and a half hours… Hollywood’s reliance on sequels and recycled intellectual property—we’re a hair’s breadth from a crossover in which Thor fights the Little Mermaid—may have been terrible for cinema. It has, however, made for complicated movies tightly packed with backstory and fan service.
Something being long doesn’t indicate focus. I haven’t seen The Brutalist, so I’ll use other long movies as an example: Avatar, King Kong, and The Hobbit series. What do those have in common? It’s not deep plot or complex character arcs, but action sequences. In other words, you could space out for 30 min and not miss anything.
Shorter movies require more attention and focus because they move faster, so you can’t miss even 10 min (or even 5) or you’ll have trouble keeping up.
As writers stopped worrying about viewers losing the thread, their shows started resembling ultra-long films. Viewers responded by binge-watching, taking in hours of material in what Vince Gilligan, who created “Breaking Bad,” has called “a giant inhalation.”
Newer shows are way less dense than they used to be. I just binged The Queen’s Gambit and literally fell asleep for an entire episode and didn’t feel like I missed anything. That show would’ve been much more interesting as a feature length film instead of a mini-series.
Or consider video games, which have grown mercilessly long.
Not because of content that requires focus, but collecting random stuff. There’s actually less story and problem solving in many of these longer games than older point and click games had, and those weren’t known for complexity…
But deep dives into niche topics have become the norm. The wildly popular podcaster Joe Rogan runs marathon interviews, some exceeding four hours, on ancient civilizations, cosmology, and mixed martial arts. A four-hour video of the YouTuber Jenny Nicholson dissecting the design flaws of a defunct Disney World hotel has eleven million views (deservedly: it’s terrific). Hayes himself confesses to spending hours “utterly transfixed” by watching old carpets being shampooed.
Something being long doesn’t mean it requires focus.
In fact, the opposite is true. My most difficult textbook in college was something like 100-150 pages, and it took us the entire class to finish. What made it difficult was a complete lack of hand-holding, and it’s perhaps my favorite pig of all the textbooks I had, and the only one I read cover to cover. It’s something I can reference, so it’s still useful years after mastering the material, but getting through it took an immense amount of focus.
Above all, they demand patience, the inclination to stick with things that aren’t immediately compelling or comprehensible. Patience is indeed a virtue, but a whiff of narcissism arises when commentators extoll it in others, like a husband praising an adoring wife. It places the responsibility for communication on listeners, giving speakers license to be overlong, unclear, or self-indulgent. When someone calls for audiences to be more patient, I instinctively think, Alternatively, you could be less boring.
This isn’t narcissism, it’s the definition of focus. It’s about using your mental faculties to extract information, and it requires a lot of effort and patience. Watching a movie for a long time doesn’t. If I want to learn something, I’d rather struggle for a few hours with an information dense text than watch a dozen hours of YouTube hand holding, and I’ll get much more from the text than the video series.
Given this statement and the sheer length of and lack of information in the article, I think the author has a focus problem.
To ascribe our woes to a society-wide attention-deficit disorder is to make the wrong diagnosis.
Which is unfortunate, because our relationships to our smartphones are far from healthy.
Seems like the author rebutted his own argument, but fails to acknowledge it.
Agreed. The truth, in many cases, is somewhere in the middle.
Here’s my perspective, for whatever it’s worth:
smartphones are addictive, and many (most?) people wish they spent less time on them
social media is addictive, and many (most?) people wish they spent less time on them
low effort trash is addictive, and many (most?) people wish they spent less time with them
That doesn’t mean smartphones or social media is causing the problem, or really any problems at all, it’s the behaviors that drive people to overuse smartphones and social media that cause problems, as well as what they’re expecting to get from it. It’s the same idea as gambling and many forms of substance addition, something is driving them to that activity, and that is the core of the problem.
If we dig a bit deeper, I think the actual causes of this behavior involves some of the following:
poor mental health - people rely on social media for validation
peer pressure - you’ll be excluded if you’re not attached to your phone
escapism - many people are in tough circumstances, and use their phone/social media as a momentary escape (also includes gambling and substance addiction)
These are problems we’ve had for a long time, and I think we’re making progress since therapy is now less taboo than it was.
That said, I do think we have a focus/attention problem. If you look at recent tech advances, it’s all about getting you a faster dopamine hit. Instead of building up anticipation for a new feature film launch, we binge shows on Netflix or whatever. Instead of reading technical documentation about how something works, we follow a video, understanding very little, if anything, about what’s going on. Instead of writing out messages to each other in forums, we copy/paste memes. Instead of earning stuff in games, we buy loot boxes. Everything is being designed to hit that dopamine button as frequently and easily as possible.
People are getting more used to entertainment being readily accessible, and I think that leads to overuse. Why limit how many shows you watch when you can run them back to back w/o any issues? Not having to wait for the next installment means you probably watch way more content than you otherwise would, which means you’re doing less of the other things in your life that you find value in.
Self discipline is hard to master, especially when you have an easy stream of lower-effort options available. And that shift is what’s causing the overuse of things like SM and smartphones and leading to attention/focus issues.
I could totally be wrong here. I’m not a psychologist, just someone on the internet that has read a few books and observed a few things.
I used to read encyclopedias and instruction manuals for pleasure as a child. As an adult, I now read Wikipedia, tech white papers, and scientific journal articles. You absolutely can read for pleasure online. It’s not all garbage.
Don’t gatekeep. It really depends on what you’re reading, not where you’re accessing it. A lot of the most popular books (trashy romance and self help books) require similar if not less focus vs quality online content.
That said, I think you’re right it we’re talking about average readers. That said, don’t jump to conclusions, and instead ask what they like to read. Who knows, maybe you’ll find something interesting. I wrote off graphic novels for years, and then I read one and it was quite good.
This article is BS. Here are some quotes:
This is like saying channel surfing (flipping through Netflix or whatever videos but never picking one) is focus.
It continues:
Something being long doesn’t indicate focus. I haven’t seen The Brutalist, so I’ll use other long movies as an example: Avatar, King Kong, and The Hobbit series. What do those have in common? It’s not deep plot or complex character arcs, but action sequences. In other words, you could space out for 30 min and not miss anything.
Shorter movies require more attention and focus because they move faster, so you can’t miss even 10 min (or even 5) or you’ll have trouble keeping up.
Newer shows are way less dense than they used to be. I just binged The Queen’s Gambit and literally fell asleep for an entire episode and didn’t feel like I missed anything. That show would’ve been much more interesting as a feature length film instead of a mini-series.
Not because of content that requires focus, but collecting random stuff. There’s actually less story and problem solving in many of these longer games than older point and click games had, and those weren’t known for complexity…
Something being long doesn’t mean it requires focus.
In fact, the opposite is true. My most difficult textbook in college was something like 100-150 pages, and it took us the entire class to finish. What made it difficult was a complete lack of hand-holding, and it’s perhaps my favorite pig of all the textbooks I had, and the only one I read cover to cover. It’s something I can reference, so it’s still useful years after mastering the material, but getting through it took an immense amount of focus.
This isn’t narcissism, it’s the definition of focus. It’s about using your mental faculties to extract information, and it requires a lot of effort and patience. Watching a movie for a long time doesn’t. If I want to learn something, I’d rather struggle for a few hours with an information dense text than watch a dozen hours of YouTube hand holding, and I’ll get much more from the text than the video series.
Given this statement and the sheer length of and lack of information in the article, I think the author has a focus problem.
Seems like the author rebutted his own argument, but fails to acknowledge it.
This article might be BS but so is every single article hyping up the opposite premise.
Agreed. The truth, in many cases, is somewhere in the middle.
Here’s my perspective, for whatever it’s worth:
That doesn’t mean smartphones or social media is causing the problem, or really any problems at all, it’s the behaviors that drive people to overuse smartphones and social media that cause problems, as well as what they’re expecting to get from it. It’s the same idea as gambling and many forms of substance addition, something is driving them to that activity, and that is the core of the problem.
If we dig a bit deeper, I think the actual causes of this behavior involves some of the following:
These are problems we’ve had for a long time, and I think we’re making progress since therapy is now less taboo than it was.
That said, I do think we have a focus/attention problem. If you look at recent tech advances, it’s all about getting you a faster dopamine hit. Instead of building up anticipation for a new feature film launch, we binge shows on Netflix or whatever. Instead of reading technical documentation about how something works, we follow a video, understanding very little, if anything, about what’s going on. Instead of writing out messages to each other in forums, we copy/paste memes. Instead of earning stuff in games, we buy loot boxes. Everything is being designed to hit that dopamine button as frequently and easily as possible.
People are getting more used to entertainment being readily accessible, and I think that leads to overuse. Why limit how many shows you watch when you can run them back to back w/o any issues? Not having to wait for the next installment means you probably watch way more content than you otherwise would, which means you’re doing less of the other things in your life that you find value in.
Self discipline is hard to master, especially when you have an easy stream of lower-effort options available. And that shift is what’s causing the overuse of things like SM and smartphones and leading to attention/focus issues.
I could totally be wrong here. I’m not a psychologist, just someone on the internet that has read a few books and observed a few things.
I read most of it and yeah, the author almost had a point but just trails off for many, many paragraphs.
Anyone who equates reading anything on the internet with “avid reading” has never read for pleasure in their life.
I used to read encyclopedias and instruction manuals for pleasure as a child. As an adult, I now read Wikipedia, tech white papers, and scientific journal articles. You absolutely can read for pleasure online. It’s not all garbage.
Don’t gatekeep. It really depends on what you’re reading, not where you’re accessing it. A lot of the most popular books (trashy romance and self help books) require similar if not less focus vs quality online content.
That said, I think you’re right it we’re talking about average readers. That said, don’t jump to conclusions, and instead ask what they like to read. Who knows, maybe you’ll find something interesting. I wrote off graphic novels for years, and then I read one and it was quite good.