SHORT ATTENTION SPAN
For those who have already forgotten the subject: Short Attention Span.
There are many in the world who study these things who claim that attention spans are becoming shorter decade by decade. I just now read an article about just that … short attention spans … by Emma Smith published in The Guardian on October 23, 2023.
It isn’t that younger people don’t know things. They do. They are able to find the thingy which turns off the flashlight feature on my phone that somehow got turned on by mistake. I was thinking that since it was the “flash” device for taking pictures that I would find the “off switch” if I opened the camera app. It wasn’t there. I looked for it in the “settings.” 10 minutes of menu searching got me nothing.
A 20-something creature walked in and I asked her if she knew where the “off” button was. She took the phone, swiped and touched and it was off. Younger people do know things. To be fair, I have learned the secret since and can solve my own “flashlight” problems now. Thank you. (It still makes no sense to put it in THAT menu. It feels “so random.” I don’t honk my car horn by swiping down on the radio, rolling down the window, then touching the gear knob.)
However, young people do not read nearly as much as former generations. In fact, the Oregon Board of Education recently eliminated the ability to read as a requirement for their high school graduates. What job can they get with their diplomas? I wouldn’t hire an Oregonian who has a diploma without first checking his or her reading and math skills, even if I owned a McDonalds franchise. “Put your name on the seventh line, your address on the twelveth line, and your social security number on the first line. Leave all other lines blank.” Tada! In one fell swoop I would eliminate the most ignorant of the applicants.
We are talking about ignorancy here. Ability to read, write, basic math, and staying on task are core abilities for our society.
Recently, trying to be friendly, I asked a third grade child what her favorite books were. She was into comics. Lots of pictures and action. Almost no details about the exact color of the sky, how the sun shone, the layers of clouds, or the changes of the moon in such a “book.” The stories do little to expand the imagination or allow the reader to “enter” the experience. I have enjoyed comics … once in a while (not a steady diet), long ago. They quickly became unimportant to me. They were easy to digest, almost like a diet of pure sugar cubes. Don’t get me wrong … I have not advanced to reading poetry for enjoyment. That takes incredible talent. I have a friend who writes the stuff and I’ve read two of his books. It was a major chore to get through them. He is probably a fair poet since he has had five books published. For me, though, the imagery is too much or too little, too obvious or completely oblique. I couldn’t get my head in that game.
I have spoken to many grade school children over the years. If you remember, I was a service technician and was legally inside hundreds of homes every year. The differences between third graders is HUGE. Some could carry on conversations with adult-world language. Some could hardly communicate with a child-world language. Those who were advanced were, almost to a person, interested in reading every book they could lay their hands on. The low end were interested in TV. TV for children is based on a 30 second attention span. If Maria is talking with Elmo at this moment, in 30 seconds the story is about the Cookie Monster trying to count to three. A count to three is how long it would take me to turn it off.
My kids (they aren’t kids anymore, but who’s counting?) could read before they went to kindergarten. They were curious about everything. We helped increase their curiosity. We taught them things which even their teachers did not know. We taught them that the sun did not “come up” in the morning, but where we lived on the earth turned toward the sun every morning. We taught them about centrifugal force while traveling in the car (the fact that a body in motion tends to want to continue in motion in a straight-line). They looked forward to big curves because then they could feel this law for themselves. Humorously, because they read so much there were many words which they had read and understood, but had never spoken aloud. When they said them others did not know what they meant…sometimes because the others had never read much or because our daughters had never “heard” the words and were mispronouncing them. There is a ton of humor in that. There is whole level of humor which only well read folk get that others miss entirely. Those with short attention spans miss whole realms of humor, along with so much more.
Reading a physical book has always been an intense pleasure for many. The library is a happy place for those people. If I may brag a bit more, my girls would cart home 15 library books at a time and have them read in less than a week. We would have allowed them to take more, but do you know how heavy 15 books are?
I just finished reading two murder mysteries an acquaintance wrote, it was a joy to sit down in a comfortable chair with a cup of coffee and read several chapters while sipping the brew. Life like that is very pleasing. If my attention span was short, I would have wandered off to another part of the house before the first chapter introduced the characters.
Maybe it is time to re-define the requisite amount of time required before the next generation decides to zone out. If we don’t we will have to shorten speech to only the essential words…
Eat.
Bed.
1+ 1 = …
IDK
Bye.
Copyright 2023 Donald Whelpley
[PLEASE NOTE that Don is always open to discussing the thoughts and opinions he shares here and welcomes comments as shared in the comment section. He doesn’t use other social media platforms, as I do, and won’t see whatever you’d like to share with him if you post it elsewhere. ~ Sherry]
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