So a view I see a lot nowadays is that attention spans are getting shorter, especially when it comes to younger generations. And the growing success of short form content on Tiktok, Youtube and Twitter for example seems to support this claim. I have a friend in their early 20s who regularly checks their phone (sometimes scrolling Tiktok content) as we’re watching a film. And an older colleague recently was pleased to see me reading a book, because he felt that anyone my age and younger was less likely to want to invest the time in reading.

But is this actually true on the whole? Does social media like Tiktok really mould our interests and alter our attention? In some respects I can see how it could change our expectations. If we’ve come to expect a webpage to load in seconds, it can be frustrating when we have to wait minutes. But to someone that was raised with dial-up, perhaps that wouldn’t be as much of an issue. In the same way, if a piece of media doesn’t capture someone in the first few minutes they may be more inclined to lose focus because they’re so used to quick dopamine hits from short form content. Alternatively, maybe this whole argument is just a ‘kids these days’ fallacy. Obviously there are plenty of young adults that buck this trend.

  • Guenther_Amanita@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    I noticed that I take a lot more care and attention on my posting on lemmy in general. The conversation can be much richer than it is on Reddit and I feel that it’s worth my time

    Yep, same. I’ve also spent A LOT of time in this quarter just creating content and answering comments. But, none of it felt like wasted energy and I don’t regret anything. I was able to strengthen my created community, help others in topics I’m interested in, and so on…

    I have terrible ADHD

    Again, same. Medication and meditation helped a lot making me more mentally balanced and being able to read a book or doing hard mental work.

    Also, when I let my thoughts drift, I think about all those great interactions I’ve had this day and not how shitty everything is in general, like it has been on Reddit. That really took a strain on my wellbeing, and I reduced my usage of it long before taking the plunge and switching to Lemmy.

    Book recommendations

    I “really” started reading not a long time ago. That was just something I was never able to due to said untreated ADHD, but now, I can, AND I LOVE IT!

    I just started reading the Witcher books after playing through The Witcher 3. Even though I played it for 400 hours “without break”, it really hurt when it ended, and I wanted more from this immersive, disgusting, magic, beautifully crafted world. Those books (I’m into 2/6 now) are way better than I could have ever imagined and really help me break out of all this RL shit. Those books also demonstrate again how capitalism, Hollywood and Netflix transform a piece of european culture (which TW is based on) and extremely interesting characters into something as shallow and americanized as the series on Netflix. Different topic…

    On the more “nerdy” side, I’m currently reading “Running Mycelium” from Paul Stamets right now. It’s about how mushrooms could save the world, for example by filtering out toxic waste or plastic from the environment, giving us a sustainable building solution, new medicinal horizons (e.g. antibiotics), and so on.

    Yeah, otherwise, I have a lot of books in my reading list and already downloaded.

    I will definately take a look into your recommendation, that sounds like a possibility for me to be fun at the next party 🙃 Text