7
votes
Worried that technology is ‘breaking your brain’? Fears about attention spans and focus are as old as writing itself
Link information
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- Title
- We've always been distracted, or at least worried that we are | Aeon Essays
- Word count
- 3055 words
I can't help but feel that for something written in 2023, the article has missed a massive qualitative difference between increasingly easy access to passive sources of information, like books and eventually (more or less) static websites like wikipedia, and lightning paced media platforms that were designed with the express intent of being as psychologically addictive as possible. It's like saying ultra-processed foods, also designed to be addictive by adding gobs of salt, refined sugar and oils, are nothing to worry about because they're still just food, and of course we've been eating food for all of history, so it's fine. Even if you don't think the dominant social media paradigm is a collapse-of-civilization level problem (which some people in fact do), it's at the very least one of the defining public health issues of our time.
The Notel study was pretty damning evidence that the adoption of TV was destructive to many positive traits of a town and the people in it.
I moved to my current town about two years ago. I don't know well over half my neighbors on the block, and it's not for a lack of trying.
Healthily maintained social networks do have the potential to be great beyond passive consumption. I don't see it happing in a good way in our eyeballs-are-dollars ad-driven algorithmic internet.