As a college student I am expected too read a lot of information and test over such. So the assertion that I read a lot would be a rather fair assertion if that were not the case. Sadly, I do as little reading as possible. Not by choice but because I feel like I can’t read. I’ve spoken with many friends from high school, college, and others from many walks of life and it seems like there is a common consensus in my generation. No one reads anymore! At least for fun that is. Sure some of us read for classes, others read absolutely as little as possible. I fall into that second group sadly. I used to love to read, I literally read the entire library at my JR High; which is no small feat. Nowadays I can barely sit down and enjoy turning page after page after page. I either sit there and get bored and run away to go and do something else, anything else. I couldn’t figure out why for the longest time. Why since the beginning of high school have I been unable of sitting down and enjoying hallucinating while flipping through a bound stack of tree flesh with ink tattoos? It made no sense to me, then I started looking at aspects of life. I noticed two things that changed, two big factors. Factors that are more related than I ever realized.

The first factor
Life has gotten faster. Our society prides itself on the speed at which we are able to do things. People have been making a living by picking up other peoples food and rushing it to them as fast as possible in their cars just so they can get a better tip. It’s incredible! You can order things and receive them days later rather than months later like in years prior. This is both a negative and a positive for our society. The positive is that you can get anything at the touch of your fingertips with fairly great speed as compared to the past. The negative is that individuals get angered and frustrated when things don’t move fast. An example, no one wants to use a slow computer. Our computers have to be faster and faster so that we can be more productive as humans. Earlier I alluded to asking people about reading, and it seems to be the case with those individuals as well. Life has gotten faster. It doesn’t feel like its going to be slowing down. Now, it reminds me of like my mom saying “time really flys” in reference to years of time. It might be that as my generation gets older we are generally speaking getting busy and we are losing track of time like our forefathers. The fast pace of society seems to be making years feel like yesterday, which makes sense because we are all moving with so much momentum through time. I saw this and was curious. Yes time does fly by like someone speeding past on the highway but its feels like it shouldn’t be moving this fast. Of course its supposed to be fast, but this feels faster than what it was prior to advancements in technology and society. What could possible be contributing to this? Why has my ability to sit down and read been at influenced?

The second factor
Social media has become a bigger thing in our lives. It seems to play a role in almost everyone’s lives nowadays, and has grabbed society by the proverbial nards. My generation is part of the patient zero interconnection epidemic. Social media has gotten more and more momentum over the years and its sucking more and more people into its gravitational pull. Everyone spends their time mindlessly scrolling on social media. Scrolling through feeds tailored to their person by an algorithm indifferent on how it might be effecting their minds only caring about revenue. I know the sudden turn in tone in this text may seem jaded, but there is good reason for such. I write in such tones as I am frustrated with it, because I too am human and have fallen susceptible to it. I mindlessly scroll myself knowing that its wrong and I should be avoiding such. It frustrates me the most that I do such, but alas I do. Luckily I have started the slow process of getting over it. But it takes time and realization to such things to get away from such things. A nail that really got sunk into the coffin for me was when I had to do a research project for a class. I had an infinite amount of possibilities I could have chosen, and yet I gravitated towards a problem I had only recognized as a problem subconsciously. I decided I was going to write a paper and make a poster over the effects of social media and phones on the mind. Not the exact wording, but that’s the gist of my research. So I started down the rabbit hole of research articles and found something interesting. All the articles that I found pointed to one thing, smart phone usage or social media usage has crippled the attention spans of our generation by making content tailored to individuals and fast paced. This is research from all over the world, there were like 10 research papers indicating and hundreds more in the database I was using. Most of the papers figured this by getting large quantities of young people to perform in tasks or trials and evaluated everything from timing to how participants felt before and after the trials. There was some articles talking about the effects on the brain and scanning it, but since I am a computer guy I didn’t know what any of that was and opted to use the easier data. I recommend going and looking for some of this information as it is quite interesting. So I came to the conclusion that smart phones and social media had an effect on my generations brain by tripping the happiness receptors repeatedly. From what I understand, essentially when you scroll social media or your phone it lights your brain up like a Christmas tree. If you do this repeatedly over the course of a period of time that would build a bad habit (some people say 21 days but idk) you essentially are getting addicted to that happiness drip that results from your perusing of the World Wide Web. Addiction is the hardest things to overcome, and people don’t really realize they are addicted to scrolling. The studies where incredibly interesting to say the least. Most even referred to this new concept of “Nomophobia” or No Mobile Phone phobia wherein individuals in the same studies had increased heart rate and anxiety when their smart phone was not present. Currently more research needs to be done to support nomophobia being actually declared an actual phobia, but its got enough momentum to support it that I would say it definitely exists. I mean, anecdote real quick, when I was in high school I nearly broke down crying and shaking in a super weird anxiety attack because my mom wanted to see something on my phone. Looking back it was super weird, but now with the understanding of the what the heck my phone is doing to my brain its like “Oh, that’s the sign of an addict.” Phones have become a big anchor for people in modern society, people have become more attached to their connection to the internet in an unhealthy way that it parallels that of an abusive relationship in which the individual is in denial of such. I find it incredibly interesting. To overcome such problems as individuals we must know and understand the sciences behind our ailments so that we can better understand the solutions.

So what would the solution be for such things? I honestly don’t know for everyone, however I can guess what might help mitigate the attention span deficiency. First, let me speak of something else so that my explanation can be better explained. Nowadays we understand brain activity with different mental “features” as spectrums as it is easier to explain than a binary assertion. I am a person that is very ADHD, in fact when I was first tested for such they did not have a place to put me on the graph that was commonly accepted at the time because I was that far into left field that my ADHD was not graph able. An outlier at the time, well as research grew and developed the scientific community started to understand that analyzing things as a spectrum was better apt. Some science indicates that ADHD is present in all people, just the smallest amount in most individuals. Not a diagnosable quantity for most, but still a quantity. I believe this to be true even though there is limited evidence, my reasoning is that ADHD used to be more commonly referred to as “battle reflex” and as we know survival of the fittest is generally a valid assertion for history. So as times required less battle reflex, people used less of it and it was genetically shrunken for the majority of the population. Key word: shrunk, not eradicated. My personal belief is that ADHD exists in everyone and has greater effects on a minority portion of the population, but has an underlying effect on the majority of the population. I think that with this being a factor combined with our societies need for speed and our entanglement with smart phones and social media that it has created a negative feedback loop. The small ADHD in most people feeds off the algorithms feeding them endless content that triggers their happiness receptors which makes them want more of it faster which results in the issues me and my peers are having here today. Now of course this is a wide generalization and of course not everyone falls under this umbrella, this is theory backed by my personal observations after all. Now what do I think we need to do to help break this cycle? So many things, firstly I feel like we should educate the masses the best we can about these things. I believe that being educated on a subject allows someone better be able to make a decision and their own opinions on a given topic, so if we promote educated on ADHD, smartphones and social media, and how fast paced we are as a society it’ll help out. The way that I broke the cycle of mindlessly starring at my phone for hours was by picking up a hobbies. Instead of “watching tv” and playing on my phone, I actually watch tv and knit. I actually know what’s going on now on the tv instead of having to rewind all the time. I think by picking up habits that place us outside of the digital box we can better focus our attention spans. If you can put down the magic rock we tricked into thinking for us and enjoy taking a walk outside or gardening or doing any number of things you can regain an attention span that has otherwise been shattered. Personally, I’ve taken steps to doing such myself. I lose track of where I put down my phone now quite often. I actually sat down and read a book for a few hours without issue. This digital age has become a blessing and a curse, everyone must figure out their own way to navigate it. Personally I think our technology is wonderful, but I am also weary of it. I advise you to be as well.

Thank you for reading my post today, this one I felt I really needed to get out and I hope it made sense to you as well,
-Ben