Phones are neat. I really like my phone. I sleep with it, I use it for dopamine to get through work, I talk to my friends with it (and my mom), and I use its flashlight pretty often. I get cases and screen protectors for it; I used to have some cool popsockets for it even. I charge it every night at the same time I recharge myself with sleep and dreams of sugarplums and jackalopes. As much as I hate to admit it, if you grabbed my phone and chucked it off a cliff, I’d be emotionally distraught. Please don’t throw my little buddy off a cliff. My little buddy is super cool cause he’s got all these apps on him. Solitaire, Angry Birds, onX Hunt, Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and Disney Plus are some of my favorites. Then there’s all the social media apps.
Some of the new media of the world is pretty fun. Instagram has some cool stuff on it. Especially memes, I’m a big meme guy. Tiktok is super cringe, but can be fun. My feed on there is a bunch of standup which I love. Facebook is a good ol’ time for all the old people I think. But I also think lots of social media has a massive bad agenda behind it and creates some big issues in this society of ours. But I don’t want to talk about that too much right now. People being brainwashed isn’t that big of a deal, really.
Besides apocalyptic agendas in social media, the other negative impact social media has made is in drastically shortening attention spans. 15 second TikToks and reels have really aided in a shift in how our culture views media. YouTube shorts is even a thing now. Youtube wasn’t short enough, so they made it shorter. I am an avid down-talker of social media, yet I still feel my ability to watch any video longer than 15 seconds or read anything longer than a meme caption fading lol.
Yes, social media is even shortening our reading spans. Honestly, I used to be an avid reader. I homeschooled, and in high school I did a ton of reading. Not just pages and pages of textbooks every day, but a lot of classic literature from past centuries as well. But now I struggle a bit when I start a book, even though all I do is read memes all day. It just isn’t the same. I have several friends who often don't make it through some of the memes that I send them because the memes involve too much reading. I’m not even worried about them seeing this because there’s no way they would read a whole-ass blog, even if their buddy wrote it.
I feel like this shortening of attention spans could be more of an issue than it seems. One, because it causes a shorter attention span in areas beyond media consumption. It affects one’s attention span for doing longer tasks at work, listening to sermons at church, and even having conversations with friends and loved ones. It’s important to be able to enjoy longer tasks and conversations, because those hold a value that the shorter ones do not. I’m not saying shorter tasks or conversations hold lesser value necessarily, just that they hold a different value.
The second issue I see from the attention span deficit is that people are missing out on the value of long form art. A lot of social media ends up being more like a trailer for art, rather than art itself. This is not true of all social media content, but true for much of it. Our precious memes are an art in themselves, but I must begrudgingly admit that even those gems rarely impact the soul in the way other art can. Long form art goes past boosting dopamine and actually has a long term impact on someone’s person.
It’s also interesting how we watch so much media on our phones now. Even the blessed souls that still brave long movies and books, often intake the media on their phone. Movies that were made with a crowded IMAX big screen in mind are viewed by a lone person on a 6 inch screen. There’s a whole union strike going on in Hollywood that is motivated partially by the effects of movie theaters selling less tickets as people stream more and more. Before the opening scene of many movies, a clip is shown of the director/creator thanking the audience for actually going to the theater to view their film. There was even one of these for the new TMNT film. I thought it was kinda funny to see Seth Rogen thanking a crowd that is primarily 10 year old boys for coming to the theater.
Books are often read on phones now, with apps like Kindle. I love some of the stuff I’ve read on my Kindle app, but it still feels strange to me that page turners are now screen swipers. It’s fine, but there is an aesthetic charm to a book and its leaves that is different than a screen.
Some people will read this and not really see an issue or dilemma. That’s fine. But for those who do agree with my perspective on the danger of shortening attention spans, how do we create improvement? I don’t know what a person can do to encourage the consumption of long form media in a microwave world, besides maybe making long form media. But I know we can take steps in our own lives to safeguard our attention span. Make it a point to carve out time to consume long form media. Sit down and read a chapter or more of a book. Instead of scrolling Instagram for an hour, sit down and read a few chapters of a book.
Or maybe instead of watching TikTok highlights of comedians like Shane Gillis, I should take the time to search his specials or podcasts and actually watch the whole thing. Maybe I should start listening to albums front to back more often, rather than always shuffling my hodgepodge music playlists. Or maybe, I should just get rid of social media altogether and reap the benefits. Not likely… but it would be a good choice. Thanks for reading. I hope this wasn’t too long for you haha.
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