While I roll my eyes at those people pointing fingers at Millennials or Zoomers and complaining that it’s those generations that have no attention span anymore, I do think the idea of shortened attention spans is a valid one.
It’s not as dire as some people proclaim nor is it specific to any age group or demographic, but it’s definitely happening.
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As a society, we simply have more distractions in our lives in general, which makes focusing on anything difficult.
There are many good, positive changes to our lives that modern technology has made, but it also brings with it more notifications and split attention and instant gratification.
It’s hard to escape into a good book or sink into the sonic depths of a whole album when your phone keeps dinging because a friend is in the midst of drama.
It’s doubly hard if the device that’s dinging is also your e-reader or music player.
I have a pet theory that part of why sales of vinyl and paper books have risen is that they simply don’t multitask.
Music can sound richer and more transporting when it’s not getting automatically paused by push notifications.
And a story can feel more transporting when there aren’t banners popping up across the top telling you the latest breaking news or message from your mother.
Unfortunately, our eyeballs are worth a lot of money to businesses, so they aren’t in any rush to make the world less distracting.
And most people default to what’s easier. I know I do half the time.
However, I do my best to limit the distractions that are within my control and over time, I feel like I’ve reminded my brain how to focus better again. It’s not perfect and I still find myself missing whole episodes of TV shows because my phone pinged, but it helps.
