My attention span has noticeably waned.
One of my favorite past-times is reading. These days, starting a new book has often become a challenge, and it’s not just reading where I have found sustaining my focus a struggle. Telephone conversations with friends are more scattered – interrupted by dropping news, pets, text messages, and interlopers. My curiosities are not as sustained as they used to be either. In the past, I might have shown interest in a topic and followed my curiosity into a deep dive on the subject. Today’s chaotic world, however, has curbed my deep dives. The moment I start to feel the hook on a topic and want to explore it more deeply, I am distracted. News seems to be “breaking” every hour, so much so that I now largely ignore such notifications, but that does not mean that they do not regularly disrupt my thoughts.
The chaos of our world has made sustained attention tenuous, and that growing trend is alarming, especially when viewed through an educational, social, and familial lens.
Based on my observations, young parents today seem hyperaware of the dangers that screens can inflict on toddlers. Toddlers, like most of us really, are drawn to screens – mesmerized into a mind-numbing awe. Educated young parents are actively trying to delay the introduction of screens as long as possible. However, the parents of older children, certainly of high schoolers, seem unable to confront this battlefield, yielding to arguments that technology is essential for communication and schoolwork. The high schooler’s life is driven by technology, so finding a way to avoid or minimize it seems an impossibility. Most parents surrender, even if they do so reluctantly.
As parents, we need a call to action. We must rebel against these trends to preserve our own attention spans and to safeguard our children’s focus.
I urge you and your children to escape screens as much as is feasibly possible. Hold a family meeting and embark on this journey as a team, intentional about focusing on relationships more: whether those relationships are with nature, with others, or with each other.
For me, I have intentionally turned to nature and the outside world, walking with friends whenever I can. I play the piano and read, choosing thrillers that start fast when my attention is especially scattered. I engage in yoga or Pilates several times a week, and I try to say “yes” to social invitations as frequently as I can.
Yet, I recognize that stepping back from technology is countercultural because of relentless pressures to embrace it. Students, many contend, must know how to use technology to capitalize on it in the future. From my experience, though, technology is user-friendly. Information abounds about how we can use it to streamline daily tasks, which is a good thing, but in my mind, only if such streamlining of tasks helps us avoid technology for the better part of our days. Moreover, schools are largely not using technology to help students master its use. Instead, technology has become a way for teachers to lighten their own load. They are using it to grade essays and to create assessments. They are even using it to usurp instruction. In short, technology’s educational hold has become much more integral within just the last two year and does not serve our children’s interests.
With springtime upon us, today is a good day to sit down with your family and set both family and personal goals to regain control over our attention spans and agree as a team about how we can minimize technology and preserve the real world: a world where humanity is prevalent.