There has been studies recetnly that has actually proven that watching too much televesioin at the young ages from 1 to 3 can and does lead to attentional problem by the age of 7. Source
Then there comes the "Internet" one the greatets invention in human civilizatioin; in my opinion. People have access to it when ever they want where ever they want at almost at a touch of their fingertips. To connect this to the first paragraph, the interenet is like television for young adulst in this generation. We can get as much of it as we want and the things we could do on it are limitless. Not just facebook and youtube, one could spend hours just reading or researching about how monkies use their opposable thumb for example. But what the young adults are doing now is they are multi tasking when they are on the web. They watch videos, check their facebook status, do some reading for computer sience class and playing a game almost simultaneously.
This type of I belive is also leading young adults and college students to have attention span problems in their daily life. Students now can hardly sit 15 minutes rading their English assignment because if they were on the computer they could be listetning to music video, chatting with friends and playing minecaft AT THE SAME TIME. Because they are so used to doing multiple things at the same time on the web they can not sit and read half a chapter with out thinking or doing something else.
If more people do not realise this problem sooner the young adulst who are soon joinin the work force in the near future could possibly have difficulty keeping their job or even getting a job.
I don't know if that's necessarily an attention span problem. On the flipside if people can do a few things at once I think that might actually help. Personally as well I find that when I'm tired say, in class, looking things up on the Internet actually helps me stay awake and attentive because my mind's actively working as opposed to daydreaming somewhere
ReplyDeleteInteresting point in Mome's comment - I wonder if many students are actually looking up something related to the class/lecture when they are doing stuff online during class. That seems to be the suggestion in the comment.
ReplyDeleteFrom the instructor's point of view - it seems more like students are using the internet or mobile phone as a way "tune out" from the class.