I have been teased for years for my fluttering attention. Sitting through movies any longer than 100 minutes is painful for me. I get restless on days that I don't check in for a gym rat credit or two. And if both the TV and the radio are mixing up the audio airwaves at the same time? Forget it. My brain secedes from the Union.
I've dealt with it my entire life. Combo parents who don't take "I forgot" as a viable excuse with an extremely demanding high school curriculum, and I managed to teach myself how to cope with it, and even benefit from it. Alas, despite my years of practice adjusting patterns to suit both my quickly progressing focus and my strongly perfectionist work ethic, doctors call it Attention Deficit Disorder, and frequently attempt to play catch with medication to help "my problem." But with ADD and ADHD on a spiking rise in today's generation, a lot of media studies are beginning to question why.
And a lot are answering that it's today's media, and social media is making it worse.
They have a point.
Have you ever noticed how movies and TV shows use video work to manipulate the viewer's emotions? Quickly scanning rooms, shaking hand-cams, distance, zoom, *shriek shriek shriek!* Have you also noticed that in every scene, you can count 3-5 seconds between each change in camera angle (JOUR 464, USC)? Next time you're tuned in to a NCIS repeat, count between camera changes. The whole show suddenly feels like it's sped up, right? But they do not extend any shot past 5 seconds. Know why?
Because studies are showing that the average attention span has literally becoming "scanning." Within five seconds, your brain has absorbed as much as it would like, and has moved on. You've never noticed how much information you can absorb in such a short period of time, have you?
Well how about this - ten years ago, the average attention span was 12 minutes (Redux). What else has been on the rise in the last ten years? Oh yea, how bout Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and even texting? The majority of posts, tweets, pins, and SMS we read, on average, takes - and this is my own estimation, from my own experience (which is a lot), not a study - I'd say it takes about 3-7 seconds to read the average social media interaction.
Since it has become such an integral part of our world, it has literally CHANGED OUR BRAINS. Neuroscience studies show that "tweeting" and other social networking activities has the same effect on our brains as talking to friends and family, or even as having sex (Big Think; Harvard Medicine). Well now I'm creeped out.
But then again... is it the chicken or the egg? If tweeting and other social networking gives us a "social high" or as Harvard puts it, acts as "brain candy," and social networking is actually us interacting with our friends, family, and lovers, is it social media that is putting our brains on sugar rush? Or is it today's constantly "going," the world continuing to spin as people work themselves to the grave, and society only clinging to the social connections we have time for? Or has the Dave the information age finally found it's "robot partner?"
I don't know. But what I do know is that I'm gonna keep popping the brain candy if there's any hope of it leading to gainful employment and getting some dough.
Sources:
Redux Media and it's Assisted Living Today infographic
Big Think's blog by Dominic Basulto: The Internet's Battle for Our Digital Souls
JOUR 464: Infographics and Videography, Spring 2010, University of South Carolina's School of Mass Communications
PS: Know how long it would take the average person to read this blog post? Less than two minutes.
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