Flitting to and fro

Are we developing ADD as a society? I came across two interesting articles on similar themes, one from the Baltimore Sun titled Plugged in, zoned out, and the other from the Atlantic Monthly titled Is Google Making Us Stupid?. From the first:

When River Hill High School 10th-grader Kelsey Balimtas sits down to do her homework, her cell phone and computer are always right in front of her. She would like to stay completely focused on the textbook, but honestly, she says, she just can’t.

Her cell phone calls to her with an irresistible buzz she can’t ignore. She bounces from homework to text message to Facebook and back to homework. “I think the quality of my homework is decreased,” she admitted.

And so do college professors and high school teachers, who say this constantly plugged-in generation is less able to focus on subjects that take deep concentration.

And from the second article:

As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

I’m not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances—literary types, most of them—many say they’re having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing.

So true. I’ve noticed it in myself, watching my attention span shrink as my mind reshapes itself in order to digest bite-sized meals instead of the full nine courses of a Tolstoy or a Melville or even the ordinary single-course meal of an Austen or a Hardy. I gravitate towards shorter books, I shy away from the long. (And “long” grows shorter by the day.) I’d rather read blogs than books.

Wrong wrong wrong! Blogs are great, and the Internet’s a wonderful thing, but I will not let it suck away my capacity to enjoy books. I want my mind to remain intact, thank you very much. I’ll do whatever it takes to fight off the ADD that’s worming its way into my head. Sure, text is text is text, whether on the web or on the pages of a book, but there’s something definitely, qualitatively different between the two. And it’s something that may be altering civilization as we know it. Something to think about.

(And yes, I realize the irony of writing this as a blog post. :P)

I most certainly have Digital ADD.
Without a doubt.

I do a good job of keeping up with people but my ability to finish long term projects is a little harder these days.

I too have ADD. It hadn’t occurred to me that it may be because of the web…good find, Ben.

Scott: It’s hard to do both, since they’re sort of different skill sets.

Meg: That’s three for three so far. :P

Funny–I’ve just been re-reading that ADD classic, _Driven to Distraction_ by Edward Hallowell. I’ve always had problems focusing and finishing projects. It was a problem before I began using the Internet daily, so I don’t think that’s a causal factor in my case. For those of us who are distractible, there have always been and always will be distractions, Internet or no.

Hmm, I should check that out. I generally seem to be able to finish projects only when I get far enough into them that there’s only one way out, and that’s through it. (I was going to say it’s like a black hole, but that doesn’t quite fit. :)) Overcoming distractions is the stuff of life.

[…] I went walking past my old elementary school a couple of weeks ago, and noticed the same thing had happened to the library there. It was a “media center.” As useful as computers and other media can be, I find this incredibly disturbing. It’s a trend of belief that with the advent of the internet, books are suddenly obsolete. It reminds me of something Ben said on a recent post: I’ve noticed it in myself, watching my attention span shrink as my mind reshapes itself in order to digest bite-sized meals instead of the full nine courses of a Tolstoy or a Melville or even the ordinary single-course meal of an Austen or a Hardy. I gravitate towards shorter books, I shy away from the long. (And “long” grows shorter by the day.) I’d rather read blogs than books. […]