I always struggle with articles that start from the opinion that no one can focus, especially kids. While I agree that something in our culture and society has changed, especially post pandemic,...
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I always struggle with articles that start from the opinion that no one can focus, especially kids. While I agree that something in our culture and society has changed, especially post pandemic, but I don't agree that social media use and internet access in your pockets are the causes. Nor that removing those things is the solution. I would need to see studies conducted to draw a conclusion like that. While I'm glad that the author noted that some people don't agree, they only put the paragraph in there to give it lip service then go right back to making their point.
A handful of professors told me they hadn’t noticed any change. Some students have always found old movies to be slow, Lynn Spigel, a professor of screen cultures at Northwestern University, told me. “But the ones who are really dedicated to learning film always were into it, and they still are.”
Why doesn't the author give any time or thought to these statements? Who are these professors, versus the ones that think there is a difference?
Anecdote time: I have ADHD, diagnosed at 38 which I masked since childhood. Movies were always an absolute joy for me: it would give me long stretches of time where I wouldn't have to think about the people around me, I wouldn't have to try to remember their names, or the history we had together. They allowed me to be led on an emotional arc with the main characters that almost always ended in a catharsis (emotional regulation was always a huge symptom for me). Movies were a socially acceptable time for me to sit and stare at the screen with someone. Afterwards any social interaction would have an excited direction, I wouldn't have to try to find commonality to talk about, or feel awkward when explaining that I still don't watch sports, or like cars or military gear.
My 8 year old's favorite movie is Flow. It's an 85 minute silent animated film; she has watched it twice through without breaks and without taking her eyes off the screen. She also has diagnosed ADHD.
I can't conclude if anything is different, or if something is different what that may be. I can certainly hypothesize, though. My ADHD was heavily internalized, in no small part because it was socially unacceptable to externalize it 30 years ago. I also had decent teachers who were able to direct me positively: by rewarding me for being a teacher's pet in elementary school. All of those things are much more uncommon these days. It's very uncommon for disruptive students to be removed from classrooms. Class sizes are growing, and are much more integrated without additional help.
It's also no longer seen as socially acceptable to just do nothing. We need to be moving, we need to be cleaning, folding laundry, updating our resume, browsing job applications, answering school or work emails at all hours. If you don't do these things you are seen as lazy, passed over for jobs, or get a lower grade. While "staying home to wash my hair" was something of a joke on sitcoms 30 years ago, it wasn't so outlandish. People could just stay in and rent a movie, and do nothing else while they watched it. We should investigate why we all feel like were not allowed to do that any longer. Why it's seen as selfish to take that time for ourselves. One teacher saying "no, seriously, watch this" while they flip through papers on their desk, or pace the room to monitor can't undo years cultural and societal norms.
I suppose my bias that I have ADHD and learned to live with it since childhood could have given me an unfair advantage. I suppose it possible that social media and cell phones are giving all of you normal people ADHD. But that idea kind of flies in the face of all of the science I have learned about what ADHD is, how it functions, and how the physical brain structure is altered from childhood.
It's pretty trivial to go to Google scholar and see just how many studies have actively explored the link between social media use and attention span. Obviously not one of them is perfect, but...
I don't agree that social media use and internet access in your pockets are the causes. Nor that removing those things is the solution. I would need to see studies conducted to draw a conclusion like that
It's pretty trivial to go to Google scholar and see just how many studies have actively explored the link between social media use and attention span.
Obviously not one of them is perfect, but this is something that is being actively studied.
I'm sure there's a lot there. A cursory skimming of them for about ten minutes doesn't show me any causative conclusions. The first few I've skimmed are all small sample sizes and utilize self...
I'm sure there's a lot there. A cursory skimming of them for about ten minutes doesn't show me any causative conclusions. The first few I've skimmed are all small sample sizes and utilize self reported surveys. How would you control for a group that claims not to use social media or short form video? They could be watching YouTube shorts at home and just not think of it as short form video. If short form video is the issue, did television commercials cause similar issues in the past? Did America's Funniest Home Videos cause issues?
I don't mean to dismiss anyone's concerns about social media, short form video, addiction, multitasking, electronics, etc. I just want to encourage everyone to think critically and firmly about these things especially before enacting any sort of policy regarding their use. I think it is very important to understand root causes before drawing conclusions. And so far I'm simply not convinced that cold turkey banning TikTock is going to solve the world's problems. That simply rings of the Satanic Panic and Refer Madness to me.
Right, though in theory having well-randomized groups addresses this (since an equal proportion of people in each group presumably would be wrong about YouTube shorts, so it should wash out.) This...
How would you control for a group that claims not to use social media or short form video? They could be watching YouTube shorts at home and just not think of it as short form video.
Right, though in theory having well-randomized groups addresses this (since an equal proportion of people in each group presumably would be wrong about YouTube shorts, so it should wash out.)
A cursory skimming of them for about ten minutes doesn't show me any causative conclusions.
This is a great instinct in general, but... I'm trying to think of how to phrase this. When I first got involved with the research world, I (very similarly) mentally threw out any study that didn't meet the gold standard. I had a couple of professors who encouraged us to think that way, in fact, because it's a really good starting point for critically examining research. Later, though - and this is after literally years of experience - as I developed into a more mature consumer of information and data, I completely reversed course. There are still junk studies, of course. Those don't deserve an iota of your attention. But - and this is what I was struggling to phrase - you develop this sort of sense of "where there's smoke, there's fire." Meaning that even though none of these studies are yet very good, in toto they point to something we should take seriously at the very least.
To return to the professors from undergrad, though, the tricky thing is that it's really difficult to differentiate that mature sense of "though none of this is great, altogether this is compelling" from, like... "vaccines cause autism!" You know?
I think an example that could connect the dots here is the example of food. Despite a million correlational studies, there has never yet been a study conclusively showing a causation between junk food being worse for you than equicaloric nonjunk food[1]. And a couple authors have tried and accidentally demonstrated the inverse. But even so, it's totally reasonable to believe that that's true, right?
[1] mostly because it's nearly impossible to put together a long enough, controllable enough study.
I don't mean to dismiss anyone's concerns about social media, short form video, addiction, multitasking, electronics, etc. I just want to encourage everyone to think critically and firmly about these things especially before enacting any sort of policy regarding their use.
I wholeheartedly applaud this and hope this discussion isn't taken as a sign that I disagree.
I'm curious why you seem to think social media has no affect on attention spans. I think it's pretty obvious it has had an effect. I've noticed it in myself even. How much of an effect depends on...
I'm curious why you seem to think social media has no affect on attention spans.
I think it's pretty obvious it has had an effect. I've noticed it in myself even. How much of an effect depends on the person. And it's not the only factor sure.
But I find it wild to claim that it has no effect and am curious where you are coming from with this deduction.
Answered when comparing the first line of the paragraph preceding the one you're referencing, emphasis mine. vs 21 vs 5 Small sample size, but 80% of the queried professors say it's an issue, so...
Why doesn't the author give any time or thought to these statements?
Answered when comparing the first line of the paragraph preceding the one you're referencing, emphasis mine.
I heard similar observations from 20 film-studies professors around the country.
vs
A handful of professors told me they hadn’t noticed any change.
21 vs 5
Small sample size, but 80% of the queried professors say it's an issue, so it seems prudent to focus the article on those that say it is a problem vs the few that say they "hadn't noticed".
Also I think it’s obvious that having a device with access to endless dopamine stimulating content will disrupt someone’s attention span, and dismissing it is a contrarian take
Also I think it’s obvious that having a device with access to endless dopamine stimulating content will disrupt someone’s attention span, and dismissing it is a contrarian take
I also have ADHD, diagnosed at 43. I often wish that we had the tools and vocabulary that we do now, when I was younger. Even just knowing the words to properly describe what I was feeling and why...
I also have ADHD, diagnosed at 43. I often wish that we had the tools and vocabulary that we do now, when I was younger. Even just knowing the words to properly describe what I was feeling and why sometimes seemingly mundane things were hard would have been incredibly helpful. Most often when I was struggling with classes or activities that I wasn't fully engaged with, I was told to "focus more" and "try harder".
#offtopic
My 8 year old's favorite movie is Flow.
I absolutely adore that movie, especially as someone who went to school for animation. It is an actual masterpiece of both animation and filmmaking.
I remember once my mom brought up some old quack who was anti-ADHD and insisted that if your kid could sit through a movie, they didn't have ADHD. Just your classic refusal to understand that ADHD...
I remember once my mom brought up some old quack who was anti-ADHD and insisted that if your kid could sit through a movie, they didn't have ADHD. Just your classic refusal to understand that ADHD is an issue with regulating your attention and not constant distractibility.
Anyway I also have ADHD and have always gotten very absorbed in movies, even when I was a child. I can sit around on my phone while a movie's playing and only half pay attention, sure, but that's usually a conscious choice and not because I just can't pay attention or anything like that. A movie has to be pretty bad to have me check-out mid-film if I came prepared to watch it, and even then that is also generally a conscious choice on my part, not some sort of fictitious inability to focus on things due to social media.
I think it’s hard to pin down specific causes, especially since “focus” is such a nebulous term. The research demonstrates weak links between cellphone use and worse academic performance...
I think it’s hard to pin down specific causes, especially since “focus” is such a nebulous term. The research demonstrates weak links between cellphone use and worse academic performance (meta-analysis here), which increases with cellphone usage (here).
The research also shows strong links between cellphone usage and worsening mental health (here), and then some correlation between worse mental health and worse academic performance (here), though note that the mental health correlation should be taken with a grain of salt. There’s a whole bunch of confounding factors like income, adverse childhood experiences, social isolation, etc. and it’s also not causation (poor academic performance could cause mental health issues).
I do want to acknowledge that the bulk of your comment is about ADHD, and that I’m not saying much about that. I want to say that “focus” is a hard term to really get a grip on; kids can get distracted in lots of ways.
While I agree that something in our culture and society has changed, especially post pandemic, but I don't agree that social media use and internet access in your pockets are the causes. Nor that removing those things is the solution. I would need to see studies conducted to draw a conclusion like that.
Still, I think social media and smartphones are pretty clearly are an issue for academic performance and learning outcomes in students, which is what we care about in the classroom. I cited studies above to hopefully offer some scientific evidence, but I believe anecdotal evidence from teachers would provide the same story.
Food for thought - when televisions were invented, and in particular when colour televisions were invented, was there mass concern that younger generations no longer wanted to sit around and...
Food for thought - when televisions were invented, and in particular when colour televisions were invented, was there mass concern that younger generations no longer wanted to sit around and listen to radio dramas? We don't really have radio dramas anymore, and it's pretty much impossible for me to sit and listen to a podcast and do literally nothing else. How much of this is a shift of cultural behaviour based on technological changes, and how much is that people genuinely cannot pay attention even when they want to?
The article also mentions that some of these professors are intentionally selecting movies that are not traditionally interesting to try and force their students to learn how to be bored. I'm not sure then that students not watching or finishing a film is indicative of unwanted inattention. I'll also say that I am the only person I know who read every book assigned in English class cover to cover (save one); everyone else either skimmed, lied, or read Sparksnotes to get the jist without having to actually read it. I don't find skipping movies you don't want to watch to necessarily be evidence of an inability to focus, except maybe the prof who has used the same test for 20 years and has found test scores to shift to be unusually low. There's absolutely evidence that social media and screen use has changed people's behaviour and attention, but I'm not totally convinced that everything here is totally new and unusual.
I don't know about when televisions where invented. But the idea that television makes you dumb was very present in the 1990s and 2000s. The main idea, then, was TV competing with books, not...
when televisions were invented, and in particular when colour televisions were invented, was there mass concern that younger generations no longer wanted to sit around and listen to radio dramas?
I don't know about when televisions where invented. But the idea that television makes you dumb was very present in the 1990s and 2000s. The main idea, then, was TV competing with books, not radio. That is still a common trope many parents will reproduce. My sister is barely 40. She demonizes videogames (which are still associated to the TV) but gave my godson a tablet, which is way more addicting in my view.
Right. I will remind people that one of the subplots from Requiem for a Dream -- a movie famous for its depiction of drug abuse -- involved a mother who was "addicted" to her television programs....
Right. I will remind people that one of the subplots from Requiem for a Dream -- a movie famous for its depiction of drug abuse -- involved a mother who was "addicted" to her television programs. My parents, daycare, etc imposed time limits on television when I was a child, so yes, it was a widely discussed issue then.
But these concerns feel so quaint compared to our relationships with phones. Not only do most people carry today's dopamine dispenser with them everywhere they go, virtually everyone expects you to have one, making it infinitely more difficult to navigate the real world without one. It's just such an obvious recipe for disaster.
Sure, and I watched a whole lot of TV when I was younger, to the point where I'd consider myself a certified Couch Potato. But looking back, I would also say that I don't think it affected my...
Sure, and I watched a whole lot of TV when I was younger, to the point where I'd consider myself a certified Couch Potato. But looking back, I would also say that I don't think it affected my attention or ability to focus - I primarily used it to destress from a busy teenage life (class, homework, sports, music, friends, etc). I also couldn't take it with me, so there was a natural end point in my usage!
One thing to consider too is that smartphones are not super recent technology, nor is the Internet, and yet the major dropoff in test scores is from about the time of the pandemic and onward. I've spoken with some undergraduate students who went through the pandemic as middle or high schoolers, and they were very adamant that they wanted to do things in person, not virtually, and that learning in person was very important to them. It struck me that for students that had to do virtual learning for potentially years, the loss of in person interactions and extracurriculars may have really altered some things for them - social activities, destressing activities, and preferred ways of learning. I think it will take awhile for us to fully understand the impact of the pandemic on young people, but I think it's much more complex than just "Tiktok and pretty colours in my phone." I have worked in university settings for almost 15 years, now, and it never really occurred to me until hiring undergraduates that their recent learning experiences were very, very different from our historical expectations. That's true of tech, but the pandemic was also a huge burden for many of them. Add in LLMs and the current undergrad/graduate experience is totally different from mine, and I think requires some creative thinking about how to teach students most effectively.
To be clear, I also don't think it's as simple as "Tiktok and pretty colours in my phone", either. I think it would be very difficult to disentangle the impacts of the pandemic, social media, and...
To be clear, I also don't think it's as simple as "Tiktok and pretty colours in my phone", either. I think it would be very difficult to disentangle the impacts of the pandemic, social media, and LLMs on the current generation of college students. I also remember teaching during the pandemic (a physics lab no less!) and can personally attest to how awkward it was for me and my students.
But I think what made virtual learning even worse was that it was so easy to distract yourself. It's much more acceptable to check your instagram reels in the privacy of your own home than in the middle of a physics lab.
Which book did you not read cover to cover? One that I skipped because I honestly didn’t have time due to conflicting due dates was Ivanhoe. This was in an English lit master’s class. Why it...
Which book did you not read cover to cover? One that I skipped because I honestly didn’t have time due to conflicting due dates was Ivanhoe. This was in an English lit master’s class. Why it marked me is that it just so happened the professor decided to invite the whole class to his place for snacks and to talk about the book. It was the end of the semester, and a beautiful day out. His house was close to campus. Cool memory except it was painfully obvious that only a handful of people actually read it and very embarrassing. I feel bad to this day.
I see your point about radio. I would also think these days short content like reels and TikTok supercharge the degradation of people’s attention span. I see it illustrated in music more than anything. Look at most new albums and songs that come out. Very few exceed the 3 minute mark, many staying closer to 2 minutes! I listen to a 2 minute song, I feel it’s just getting started.
Oh, how sad for your professor! My MIL is a retired schoolteacher, and apparently one of her hallmarks was having big events for her students, who typically didn't care nearly as much as she did,...
Oh, how sad for your professor! My MIL is a retired schoolteacher, and apparently one of her hallmarks was having big events for her students, who typically didn't care nearly as much as she did, and she ended up quietly devastated every time. So I think it might actually be quite common at many levels of teaching - their job is to think of ways to engage and guide you, whereas the focus of students is on managing their workload and doing well enough. I'm sure your professor would be delighted though that in retrospect you appreciated the effort he made.
The one book I only partially read was Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - thankfully my assigned reading was the first or second chapter, and so my slog was minimal, but I absolutely hated it. I read all of The Odyssey and Invisible Man ahead of schedule, but not that one. That also reminds me that I had to read Walden for a middle school class, and I also hated that one, so I guess the total is actually two. I'm curious whether my eco friends have actually read it or have copies on their shelves for room vibes. Maybe I'm just not meant to read long, meandering, first-person navel gazing...
That's super interesting about music, I don't really listen to the radio and I don't listen to popular music (aside from Eurovision, if that counts?!), so I have zero insight about those changes. On one hand I'd be curious how much people listen to streams of specific genres vs. albums - I know sometimes at work I just throw a playlist or stream on, and so I imagine a lot of listening is done via programs like Spotify or Youtube. I've actually found that having whole albums on YouTube now makes me more likely to listen to an artist's entire album, similar to when I was in high school and actively buying CDs and cassettes. For a long time in the middle I would just pick and choose individual songs I liked, and while I still do that, I definitely pay more attention to entire albums if they're freely available to listen to. I wonder how other people's listening habits have changed over time.
Yeah, it was pretty sad. I wish I just had the courage back then to be honest. He may have appreciated that more than us collectively pretending and leaning on the 2-3 people who did read it. Oh,...
Yeah, it was pretty sad. I wish I just had the courage back then to be honest. He may have appreciated that more than us collectively pretending and leaning on the 2-3 people who did read it.
Oh, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, that was a pass for me too. My memory is fuzzy but I want to say it was 2nd year of university, I may have read part of it? I remember it coming up, and not reading the whole thing for sure. I made a point of skipping Persuasion by Jane Austen every time it came up (at least twice). I did enjoy Wuthering Heights, from the same era tho!
On the other hand, in the 3rd and 4th year, I took some course in sci-fi literature and horror/fantastic literature (not fantasy, more like old school things like Edgar Allan Poe). Read all those books because they were actually fun. In the sci-fi class I read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Amazing.
I listen to very little popular music, but there is the occasional catchy tune that ends up on one of my playlists. Generally I curate my own playlists, vaguely by genre or mood, adding songs I hear on the radio. I listen mostly to 2 stations that are ad-free and play a very wide selection of music from across the world and different genres. One is ICI Musique basically the national station, French version, and the other CJSW a local university station here in Calgary (support local!). I still listen to albums a lot, though I feel like this is not the norm? I could be wrong, I am not really up to speed what the consensus is. It probably varies by age group. I grew up with tapes and CD's, much like you, then once I had internet, pirated songs and albums from places like WinMX, Morpheus, Kazaa, Limewire, and later bittorrent. Now I have a collection of lossless CD rips (ended up purchasing CDs of most of my favorite albums once I had a decent income), a handful of vinyl records (just the top top favorites), and of course streaming, where I have a selection of the curated playlists I mentioned, and collection of albums. I guess I'm a bit all over the place. What are your current top 3 albums?
I would say "true crime" podcasts are the modern equivalent. But agreed I do use podcasts for situations where I'm in transit (walking, driving, bus, metro, plane, etc.) or cooking. Not sure I'd...
We don't really have radio dramas anymore
I would say "true crime" podcasts are the modern equivalent. But agreed I do use podcasts for situations where I'm in transit (walking, driving, bus, metro, plane, etc.) or cooking. Not sure I'd ever listen to one exclusively and just sit there. Maybe if I had a great view.
As a film major, I was glad to sit through lots of slow movies. That said, many were silent, and many were very short. The Conversation is like 2 hours of 1970s audio recording ASMR. It is a good...
As a film major, I was glad to sit through lots of slow movies. That said, many were silent, and many were very short. The Conversation is like 2 hours of 1970s audio recording ASMR. It is a good movie, but I encourage the reader to watch it and make their own conclusions.
I used to watch Bergman and Tarkovsky for fun, but most students were not like me. Even back in 2003, some of my colleagues struggled. And even if I agree that kids these days don't pay attention, The Conversation is a very high bar.
There is also the issue of people who go to film school but don't like films. That also existed in 2003, and to this day I don't understand why they did that.
I always struggle with articles that start from the opinion that no one can focus, especially kids. While I agree that something in our culture and society has changed, especially post pandemic, but I don't agree that social media use and internet access in your pockets are the causes. Nor that removing those things is the solution. I would need to see studies conducted to draw a conclusion like that. While I'm glad that the author noted that some people don't agree, they only put the paragraph in there to give it lip service then go right back to making their point.
Why doesn't the author give any time or thought to these statements? Who are these professors, versus the ones that think there is a difference?
Anecdote time: I have ADHD, diagnosed at 38 which I masked since childhood. Movies were always an absolute joy for me: it would give me long stretches of time where I wouldn't have to think about the people around me, I wouldn't have to try to remember their names, or the history we had together. They allowed me to be led on an emotional arc with the main characters that almost always ended in a catharsis (emotional regulation was always a huge symptom for me). Movies were a socially acceptable time for me to sit and stare at the screen with someone. Afterwards any social interaction would have an excited direction, I wouldn't have to try to find commonality to talk about, or feel awkward when explaining that I still don't watch sports, or like cars or military gear.
My 8 year old's favorite movie is Flow. It's an 85 minute silent animated film; she has watched it twice through without breaks and without taking her eyes off the screen. She also has diagnosed ADHD.
I can't conclude if anything is different, or if something is different what that may be. I can certainly hypothesize, though. My ADHD was heavily internalized, in no small part because it was socially unacceptable to externalize it 30 years ago. I also had decent teachers who were able to direct me positively: by rewarding me for being a teacher's pet in elementary school. All of those things are much more uncommon these days. It's very uncommon for disruptive students to be removed from classrooms. Class sizes are growing, and are much more integrated without additional help.
It's also no longer seen as socially acceptable to just do nothing. We need to be moving, we need to be cleaning, folding laundry, updating our resume, browsing job applications, answering school or work emails at all hours. If you don't do these things you are seen as lazy, passed over for jobs, or get a lower grade. While "staying home to wash my hair" was something of a joke on sitcoms 30 years ago, it wasn't so outlandish. People could just stay in and rent a movie, and do nothing else while they watched it. We should investigate why we all feel like were not allowed to do that any longer. Why it's seen as selfish to take that time for ourselves. One teacher saying "no, seriously, watch this" while they flip through papers on their desk, or pace the room to monitor can't undo years cultural and societal norms.
I suppose my bias that I have ADHD and learned to live with it since childhood could have given me an unfair advantage. I suppose it possible that social media and cell phones are giving all of you normal people ADHD. But that idea kind of flies in the face of all of the science I have learned about what ADHD is, how it functions, and how the physical brain structure is altered from childhood.
It's pretty trivial to go to Google scholar and see just how many studies have actively explored the link between social media use and attention span.
Obviously not one of them is perfect, but this is something that is being actively studied.
I'm sure there's a lot there. A cursory skimming of them for about ten minutes doesn't show me any causative conclusions. The first few I've skimmed are all small sample sizes and utilize self reported surveys. How would you control for a group that claims not to use social media or short form video? They could be watching YouTube shorts at home and just not think of it as short form video. If short form video is the issue, did television commercials cause similar issues in the past? Did America's Funniest Home Videos cause issues?
I don't mean to dismiss anyone's concerns about social media, short form video, addiction, multitasking, electronics, etc. I just want to encourage everyone to think critically and firmly about these things especially before enacting any sort of policy regarding their use. I think it is very important to understand root causes before drawing conclusions. And so far I'm simply not convinced that cold turkey banning TikTock is going to solve the world's problems. That simply rings of the Satanic Panic and Refer Madness to me.
Right, though in theory having well-randomized groups addresses this (since an equal proportion of people in each group presumably would be wrong about YouTube shorts, so it should wash out.)
This is a great instinct in general, but... I'm trying to think of how to phrase this. When I first got involved with the research world, I (very similarly) mentally threw out any study that didn't meet the gold standard. I had a couple of professors who encouraged us to think that way, in fact, because it's a really good starting point for critically examining research. Later, though - and this is after literally years of experience - as I developed into a more mature consumer of information and data, I completely reversed course. There are still junk studies, of course. Those don't deserve an iota of your attention. But - and this is what I was struggling to phrase - you develop this sort of sense of "where there's smoke, there's fire." Meaning that even though none of these studies are yet very good, in toto they point to something we should take seriously at the very least.
To return to the professors from undergrad, though, the tricky thing is that it's really difficult to differentiate that mature sense of "though none of this is great, altogether this is compelling" from, like... "vaccines cause autism!" You know?
I think an example that could connect the dots here is the example of food. Despite a million correlational studies, there has never yet been a study conclusively showing a causation between junk food being worse for you than equicaloric nonjunk food[1]. And a couple authors have tried and accidentally demonstrated the inverse. But even so, it's totally reasonable to believe that that's true, right?
[1] mostly because it's nearly impossible to put together a long enough, controllable enough study.
I wholeheartedly applaud this and hope this discussion isn't taken as a sign that I disagree.
I'm curious why you seem to think social media has no affect on attention spans.
I think it's pretty obvious it has had an effect. I've noticed it in myself even. How much of an effect depends on the person. And it's not the only factor sure.
But I find it wild to claim that it has no effect and am curious where you are coming from with this deduction.
Answered when comparing the first line of the paragraph preceding the one you're referencing, emphasis mine.
vs
21 vs 5
Small sample size, but 80% of the queried professors say it's an issue, so it seems prudent to focus the article on those that say it is a problem vs the few that say they "hadn't noticed".
Also I think it’s obvious that having a device with access to endless dopamine stimulating content will disrupt someone’s attention span, and dismissing it is a contrarian take
I also have ADHD, diagnosed at 43. I often wish that we had the tools and vocabulary that we do now, when I was younger. Even just knowing the words to properly describe what I was feeling and why sometimes seemingly mundane things were hard would have been incredibly helpful. Most often when I was struggling with classes or activities that I wasn't fully engaged with, I was told to "focus more" and "try harder".
#offtopic
I absolutely adore that movie, especially as someone who went to school for animation. It is an actual masterpiece of both animation and filmmaking.
I remember once my mom brought up some old quack who was anti-ADHD and insisted that if your kid could sit through a movie, they didn't have ADHD. Just your classic refusal to understand that ADHD is an issue with regulating your attention and not constant distractibility.
Anyway I also have ADHD and have always gotten very absorbed in movies, even when I was a child. I can sit around on my phone while a movie's playing and only half pay attention, sure, but that's usually a conscious choice and not because I just can't pay attention or anything like that. A movie has to be pretty bad to have me check-out mid-film if I came prepared to watch it, and even then that is also generally a conscious choice on my part, not some sort of fictitious inability to focus on things due to social media.
I think it’s hard to pin down specific causes, especially since “focus” is such a nebulous term. The research demonstrates weak links between cellphone use and worse academic performance (meta-analysis here), which increases with cellphone usage (here).
The research also shows strong links between cellphone usage and worsening mental health (here), and then some correlation between worse mental health and worse academic performance (here), though note that the mental health correlation should be taken with a grain of salt. There’s a whole bunch of confounding factors like income, adverse childhood experiences, social isolation, etc. and it’s also not causation (poor academic performance could cause mental health issues).
I do want to acknowledge that the bulk of your comment is about ADHD, and that I’m not saying much about that. I want to say that “focus” is a hard term to really get a grip on; kids can get distracted in lots of ways.
Still, I think social media and smartphones are pretty clearly are an issue for academic performance and learning outcomes in students, which is what we care about in the classroom. I cited studies above to hopefully offer some scientific evidence, but I believe anecdotal evidence from teachers would provide the same story.
Food for thought - when televisions were invented, and in particular when colour televisions were invented, was there mass concern that younger generations no longer wanted to sit around and listen to radio dramas? We don't really have radio dramas anymore, and it's pretty much impossible for me to sit and listen to a podcast and do literally nothing else. How much of this is a shift of cultural behaviour based on technological changes, and how much is that people genuinely cannot pay attention even when they want to?
The article also mentions that some of these professors are intentionally selecting movies that are not traditionally interesting to try and force their students to learn how to be bored. I'm not sure then that students not watching or finishing a film is indicative of unwanted inattention. I'll also say that I am the only person I know who read every book assigned in English class cover to cover (save one); everyone else either skimmed, lied, or read Sparksnotes to get the jist without having to actually read it. I don't find skipping movies you don't want to watch to necessarily be evidence of an inability to focus, except maybe the prof who has used the same test for 20 years and has found test scores to shift to be unusually low. There's absolutely evidence that social media and screen use has changed people's behaviour and attention, but I'm not totally convinced that everything here is totally new and unusual.
I don't know about when televisions where invented. But the idea that television makes you dumb was very present in the 1990s and 2000s. The main idea, then, was TV competing with books, not radio. That is still a common trope many parents will reproduce. My sister is barely 40. She demonizes videogames (which are still associated to the TV) but gave my godson a tablet, which is way more addicting in my view.
Right. I will remind people that one of the subplots from Requiem for a Dream -- a movie famous for its depiction of drug abuse -- involved a mother who was "addicted" to her television programs. My parents, daycare, etc imposed time limits on television when I was a child, so yes, it was a widely discussed issue then.
But these concerns feel so quaint compared to our relationships with phones. Not only do most people carry today's dopamine dispenser with them everywhere they go, virtually everyone expects you to have one, making it infinitely more difficult to navigate the real world without one. It's just such an obvious recipe for disaster.
Sure, and I watched a whole lot of TV when I was younger, to the point where I'd consider myself a certified Couch Potato. But looking back, I would also say that I don't think it affected my attention or ability to focus - I primarily used it to destress from a busy teenage life (class, homework, sports, music, friends, etc). I also couldn't take it with me, so there was a natural end point in my usage!
One thing to consider too is that smartphones are not super recent technology, nor is the Internet, and yet the major dropoff in test scores is from about the time of the pandemic and onward. I've spoken with some undergraduate students who went through the pandemic as middle or high schoolers, and they were very adamant that they wanted to do things in person, not virtually, and that learning in person was very important to them. It struck me that for students that had to do virtual learning for potentially years, the loss of in person interactions and extracurriculars may have really altered some things for them - social activities, destressing activities, and preferred ways of learning. I think it will take awhile for us to fully understand the impact of the pandemic on young people, but I think it's much more complex than just "Tiktok and pretty colours in my phone." I have worked in university settings for almost 15 years, now, and it never really occurred to me until hiring undergraduates that their recent learning experiences were very, very different from our historical expectations. That's true of tech, but the pandemic was also a huge burden for many of them. Add in LLMs and the current undergrad/graduate experience is totally different from mine, and I think requires some creative thinking about how to teach students most effectively.
To be clear, I also don't think it's as simple as "Tiktok and pretty colours in my phone", either. I think it would be very difficult to disentangle the impacts of the pandemic, social media, and LLMs on the current generation of college students. I also remember teaching during the pandemic (a physics lab no less!) and can personally attest to how awkward it was for me and my students.
But I think what made virtual learning even worse was that it was so easy to distract yourself. It's much more acceptable to check your instagram reels in the privacy of your own home than in the middle of a physics lab.
Paul Graham calls this the acceleration of addictiveness.
Which book did you not read cover to cover? One that I skipped because I honestly didn’t have time due to conflicting due dates was Ivanhoe. This was in an English lit master’s class. Why it marked me is that it just so happened the professor decided to invite the whole class to his place for snacks and to talk about the book. It was the end of the semester, and a beautiful day out. His house was close to campus. Cool memory except it was painfully obvious that only a handful of people actually read it and very embarrassing. I feel bad to this day.
I see your point about radio. I would also think these days short content like reels and TikTok supercharge the degradation of people’s attention span. I see it illustrated in music more than anything. Look at most new albums and songs that come out. Very few exceed the 3 minute mark, many staying closer to 2 minutes! I listen to a 2 minute song, I feel it’s just getting started.
Oh, how sad for your professor! My MIL is a retired schoolteacher, and apparently one of her hallmarks was having big events for her students, who typically didn't care nearly as much as she did, and she ended up quietly devastated every time. So I think it might actually be quite common at many levels of teaching - their job is to think of ways to engage and guide you, whereas the focus of students is on managing their workload and doing well enough. I'm sure your professor would be delighted though that in retrospect you appreciated the effort he made.
The one book I only partially read was Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - thankfully my assigned reading was the first or second chapter, and so my slog was minimal, but I absolutely hated it. I read all of The Odyssey and Invisible Man ahead of schedule, but not that one. That also reminds me that I had to read Walden for a middle school class, and I also hated that one, so I guess the total is actually two. I'm curious whether my eco friends have actually read it or have copies on their shelves for room vibes. Maybe I'm just not meant to read long, meandering, first-person navel gazing...
That's super interesting about music, I don't really listen to the radio and I don't listen to popular music (aside from Eurovision, if that counts?!), so I have zero insight about those changes. On one hand I'd be curious how much people listen to streams of specific genres vs. albums - I know sometimes at work I just throw a playlist or stream on, and so I imagine a lot of listening is done via programs like Spotify or Youtube. I've actually found that having whole albums on YouTube now makes me more likely to listen to an artist's entire album, similar to when I was in high school and actively buying CDs and cassettes. For a long time in the middle I would just pick and choose individual songs I liked, and while I still do that, I definitely pay more attention to entire albums if they're freely available to listen to. I wonder how other people's listening habits have changed over time.
Yeah, it was pretty sad. I wish I just had the courage back then to be honest. He may have appreciated that more than us collectively pretending and leaning on the 2-3 people who did read it.
Oh, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, that was a pass for me too. My memory is fuzzy but I want to say it was 2nd year of university, I may have read part of it? I remember it coming up, and not reading the whole thing for sure. I made a point of skipping Persuasion by Jane Austen every time it came up (at least twice). I did enjoy Wuthering Heights, from the same era tho!
On the other hand, in the 3rd and 4th year, I took some course in sci-fi literature and horror/fantastic literature (not fantasy, more like old school things like Edgar Allan Poe). Read all those books because they were actually fun. In the sci-fi class I read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Amazing.
I listen to very little popular music, but there is the occasional catchy tune that ends up on one of my playlists. Generally I curate my own playlists, vaguely by genre or mood, adding songs I hear on the radio. I listen mostly to 2 stations that are ad-free and play a very wide selection of music from across the world and different genres. One is ICI Musique basically the national station, French version, and the other CJSW a local university station here in Calgary (support local!). I still listen to albums a lot, though I feel like this is not the norm? I could be wrong, I am not really up to speed what the consensus is. It probably varies by age group. I grew up with tapes and CD's, much like you, then once I had internet, pirated songs and albums from places like WinMX, Morpheus, Kazaa, Limewire, and later bittorrent. Now I have a collection of lossless CD rips (ended up purchasing CDs of most of my favorite albums once I had a decent income), a handful of vinyl records (just the top top favorites), and of course streaming, where I have a selection of the curated playlists I mentioned, and collection of albums. I guess I'm a bit all over the place. What are your current top 3 albums?
I would say "true crime" podcasts are the modern equivalent. But agreed I do use podcasts for situations where I'm in transit (walking, driving, bus, metro, plane, etc.) or cooking. Not sure I'd ever listen to one exclusively and just sit there. Maybe if I had a great view.
“Audio dramas” still exist although obviously not as big as radio dramas once were.
Homecoming was a radio drama podcast that I thought was fantastic; I know back then Gimlet tried a few of those (and generally I really enjoyed them).
As a film major, I was glad to sit through lots of slow movies. That said, many were silent, and many were very short. The Conversation is like 2 hours of 1970s audio recording ASMR. It is a good movie, but I encourage the reader to watch it and make their own conclusions.
I used to watch Bergman and Tarkovsky for fun, but most students were not like me. Even back in 2003, some of my colleagues struggled. And even if I agree that kids these days don't pay attention, The Conversation is a very high bar.
There is also the issue of people who go to film school but don't like films. That also existed in 2003, and to this day I don't understand why they did that.
(paywalled, but at least it's not a TLDW video)
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