Tech giveth, and tech taketh away

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/01/2024 (604 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A sideways-blowing mist is obscuring my view on this overcast day in St. John’s. I should be focused on my computer screen instead of looking out the window, but I’m easily distracted by the sounds of vehicles whooshing by on the wet pavement and the mournful cry of a lone gull far above me.

Easily distracted — these are the key words here.

I don’t dare log into Facebook or X while I’m writing this, or next thing I’ll be taking a few minutes to check in on my relatives or to doom-scroll through a timeline that has become increasingly filled with lame ads, venomous political diatribes and sad posts from bereft people who have just lost their pets.

Many of us blame technology — and especially cellphones and social media — for having whittled away our attention spans.

I often find myself putting down the book I’m reading — no matter how engrossing — to compulsively check my cellphone every few minutes for fear of missing out on something monumental, even as the radio broadcast chattering away in the background would surely let us know if there was breaking news.

But our mobile devices are alluringly convenient.

I can be impatient, so I love the speed with which I can purchase something with a tap of my credit card, and then transfer money to the credit card from my bank account, all while running an errand in the car (as long as I’m not the one driving).

In my former incarnation as the managing editor of a newspaper, I could assign reporters and photographers to cover stories, read news on our website, respond to reader emails, make a dinner reservation, and even copyedit news articles, all while sitting in my doctors’ waiting room. (And he never kept me waiting long).

It made me feel as if I wasn’t wasting my employers’ time on a personal appointment. It also made me feel unable to sit quietly and enjoy a break from the chaos of the newsroom or to chat pleasantly with the people sitting around me.

When I go for a walk solo these days, I often use the time to catch up with family and friends on the phone — which is good — but I miss out on many of the psychological advantages of being out in nature, unplugged.

So, while there are definitely benefits and time savings to be had with digital technology, there are trade-offs. We are giving up something of ourselves when we use it: our ability to be mindfully where we are, in the moment.

(Do I have your attention, or are you reaching for your phone?)

Scientific conclusions vary when it comes to exactly how much our attention spans have diminished, as the research continues.

Ironically, my own reading on this topic involved a foray into an article headlined “A Deep Dive Into the Shrinking Attention Span,” on the website eLearningIndustry.com, where the text I was trying to read was annoyingly obscured by pop-up ads announcing upcoming webinars on “achieving peak learning.”

Thankfully the article had a short summary at the top of the page that encapsulated the gist of it for those of us with short attention spans.

King’s College London, in the U.K., actually has a Centre for Attention Studies, and researchers there — in conjunction with those at its Policy Institute — conducted a survey recently on technology’s effects on our ability to concentrate. The results were reported in February 2022.

(Sorry, my husband just walked into my home office and apologized for interrupting my train of thought with a quick question. You can’t make this stuff up.)

Where was I? Oh yes, the King’s College London survey found that while many of the U.K. respondents vastly underestimated how often they check their phones in the run of a day, many also overestimated how short their attention spans have become.

Fifty per cent of the people surveyed, for example, had fallen for the oft-repeated myth that “the average attention span among adults today is just eight seconds long, supposedly worse than that of a goldfish.”

It’s erroneous information that has found its way into all sorts of coverage of the issue — including The New York Times, The Guardian, Time Magazine and, incidentally, in that article I was reading on the website eLearningIndustry.com —but it has been debunked by the BBC.

Not only is the “eight-second” figure dubious, but it turns out — hang on a sec; my perusal of the BBC website was just interrupted by an ad inviting me to register for a BBC account — that goldfish have good memory spans.

Of course, the King’s College survey went into much greater depth; I just couldn’t focus long enough to get through it.

Pam Frampton is a freelance writer and editor who lives in St. John’s. Email pamelajframpton@gmail.com X: pam_frampton