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How Tech Ate the Media and Our Minds (axios.com)
From a report: On average, we check our phones 50 times each day -- with some studies suggesting it could three times that amount. We spend around 6 hours per day consuming digital media. As a result, the human attention span has fallen from 12 seconds to eight seconds since 2000, while the goldfish attention span is nine seconds. And we just mindlessly pass along information without reading or checking it. Columbia University found that nearly 60 percent of all social media posts are shared without being clicked on.
And in other news today, the proliferation of social media has led to the decline of proof reading your posts, leaving out silly, little, unimportant words:
On average, we check our phones 50 times each day -- with some studies suggesting it could three times that amount.
Perhaps this might read better if it had a simple, little word in there:
On average, we check our phones 50 times each day -- with some studies suggesting it could BE three times that amount.
Yes, I did read the article. They left the word out there too. Oh, the irony of it all!
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Our attention span has not reduced to 8 seconds. Heavy consumers of media and tech do not pay attention to non-interactive content (TV, ads), but are better at paying attention to interactive content (games, software). This is a shift of attention from passive consumers to active participants. When presented with passive content, tech users tune out... no surprise. But that's not the same as a globally reduced attention span.
The full report is available.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
More proof that Huxley was right and Orwell was wrong. You don't need totalitarianism to enslave mankind, just a nearly infinite amount of amusing distractions. The argument is presented nicely here in web-comic form.