Technologies Causing Social and Physical Interrurptions in our Attention Spans and Social Lives!
Alice Aspen March
January 02, 2009
Wherever Blackberries, IPods, cell phones are sold, people are buying them, using them constantly and becoming more disconnected from being in the present. People tell me:
"I just can´t stop it!" a man says to a friend, while he´s using his thumbs to send a text message.
"She´s a Blackberry "nut". I never saw anything like it. There must have been 15 telephone calls back and forth in one hour. I couldn´t even talk to her."
"My staff won´t put their Blackberries away during staff meetings, and we´re in the IT business." The energy in the meeting is dissipated, when people´s interest goes into texting others."
A store cashier wrote to "Dear Abbey" recently telling her she felt so invisible and alienated by all the Blackberry-using shoppers, that she´d begun withholding certain items they´d purchased and didn't package them.
I´ve heard from chiropractors who are treating more thumbs, from paid expert witnesses who are testifying more and more in the growing number of auto accidents caused by Blackberry-wielding drivers and walkers. I hear more and more about the decrease in "familiar attention spans" which are constantly interrupted by Blackberry addicts of all ages. I´ve seen care-takers talking and texting, while they´re pushing baby buggies and wheel chairs, golfers trying to talk and putt at the same time. Kids are texting to each other in their parents' cars to avoid speaking.
This addiction to technology is not really a new story, as Americans have had an addiction to television viewing, since its arrival in the mainstream almost sixty years ago. Heavy television watching becomes the first addiction in a child´s life; kids spend more hours viewing television than they spend going to school. Research has shown that constant pre-school TV watching makes kids unavailable to learn and unavailable to participate in class activities. Passivity has already set in! TV addiction often leads to the next addiction, playing video games, leading to the next addiction, computers followed by cell phone usage. And now we´re hearing about people who spend hours loading up their IPods; some have actually loaded over 8000 songs! There even seems to be a growing competition among young adults to see how many songs they can upload and listen to. They take their IPods to concerts and revel in taping more than the next guy.
I am curious about when people have the time to listen to all these songs, if they´re actively involved in their lives. Are they able to give equal attention to two things at once? Or are they building an attention deficit into their lives in their personal relationships? What or who really gets the first level of attention? Or are we simply giving "partial attention" to each other? People definitely can and do feel when our attention is divided.
There is also a growing anxiety which occurs when we lose or misplaces our Blackberries. Who remembers phone numbers anymore, when they´re all at our finger tips in that small hand-held box? Who doesn´t worry about losing all kinds of information stored in that little black box.
Blackberries are "multi-task friendly", as their users can be simultaneously involved in everything from talking to text messaging, getting e-mail, stock and weather reports, to Web surfing to photographing scenes previously unrecorded. School kids have been known to rile up one of their teachers to act out in unattractive ways, take photos which they then post to Online communities such as MySpace and Facebook. It´s as if the technological boundaries have become so clouded or merged that people live in different realities, one in the real world and one in a small box that they carry in their pockets.
When kids were first addicted to television, at least it was in one place. Now they can carry their addictions everywhere they go, from school to a outdoor activities to the mall to dinner. The technology is everywhere.
Yes, people all around the world who never had access to telephones, now have joined the ranks of those who do, making communication easier between people world-wide. Certainly while cell phones are both convenient and easy to use, they also can be invasive in social and business situations and can really disconnect us to ourselves. When we pull our attention away from where we are, we are creating an attention deficit right in that moment; the people we´re with feel devalued, unsupported, unheard and invisible.
Kids and young adults use their cells so frequently, I wonder if they´re replacing a certain kind of thought process, for it becomes easier to call someone else for a solution to a problem than to actually think about finding our own. Kids need to go through the process of trial and error, to learn to think for themselves, to develop their inner resources which empower them and give them opportunities to be creative.
If we adults let ourselves be consumed by all our various technologies, we actually create attention deficits wherever we go. When we pay attention actively and wholly to our personal connections, we enrich our lives and the lives of others. Let´s do what it takes now to stop the attention deficit that´s developing socially by consciously moderating when, where and how much we´re involved in all the advanced technologies which keep coming. We cannot let them diminish our humanity!
"I just can´t stop it!" a man says to a friend, while he´s using his thumbs to send a text message.
"She´s a Blackberry "nut". I never saw anything like it. There must have been 15 telephone calls back and forth in one hour. I couldn´t even talk to her."
"My staff won´t put their Blackberries away during staff meetings, and we´re in the IT business." The energy in the meeting is dissipated, when people´s interest goes into texting others."
A store cashier wrote to "Dear Abbey" recently telling her she felt so invisible and alienated by all the Blackberry-using shoppers, that she´d begun withholding certain items they´d purchased and didn't package them.
I´ve heard from chiropractors who are treating more thumbs, from paid expert witnesses who are testifying more and more in the growing number of auto accidents caused by Blackberry-wielding drivers and walkers. I hear more and more about the decrease in "familiar attention spans" which are constantly interrupted by Blackberry addicts of all ages. I´ve seen care-takers talking and texting, while they´re pushing baby buggies and wheel chairs, golfers trying to talk and putt at the same time. Kids are texting to each other in their parents' cars to avoid speaking.
This addiction to technology is not really a new story, as Americans have had an addiction to television viewing, since its arrival in the mainstream almost sixty years ago. Heavy television watching becomes the first addiction in a child´s life; kids spend more hours viewing television than they spend going to school. Research has shown that constant pre-school TV watching makes kids unavailable to learn and unavailable to participate in class activities. Passivity has already set in! TV addiction often leads to the next addiction, playing video games, leading to the next addiction, computers followed by cell phone usage. And now we´re hearing about people who spend hours loading up their IPods; some have actually loaded over 8000 songs! There even seems to be a growing competition among young adults to see how many songs they can upload and listen to. They take their IPods to concerts and revel in taping more than the next guy.
I am curious about when people have the time to listen to all these songs, if they´re actively involved in their lives. Are they able to give equal attention to two things at once? Or are they building an attention deficit into their lives in their personal relationships? What or who really gets the first level of attention? Or are we simply giving "partial attention" to each other? People definitely can and do feel when our attention is divided.
There is also a growing anxiety which occurs when we lose or misplaces our Blackberries. Who remembers phone numbers anymore, when they´re all at our finger tips in that small hand-held box? Who doesn´t worry about losing all kinds of information stored in that little black box.
Blackberries are "multi-task friendly", as their users can be simultaneously involved in everything from talking to text messaging, getting e-mail, stock and weather reports, to Web surfing to photographing scenes previously unrecorded. School kids have been known to rile up one of their teachers to act out in unattractive ways, take photos which they then post to Online communities such as MySpace and Facebook. It´s as if the technological boundaries have become so clouded or merged that people live in different realities, one in the real world and one in a small box that they carry in their pockets.
When kids were first addicted to television, at least it was in one place. Now they can carry their addictions everywhere they go, from school to a outdoor activities to the mall to dinner. The technology is everywhere.
Yes, people all around the world who never had access to telephones, now have joined the ranks of those who do, making communication easier between people world-wide. Certainly while cell phones are both convenient and easy to use, they also can be invasive in social and business situations and can really disconnect us to ourselves. When we pull our attention away from where we are, we are creating an attention deficit right in that moment; the people we´re with feel devalued, unsupported, unheard and invisible.
Kids and young adults use their cells so frequently, I wonder if they´re replacing a certain kind of thought process, for it becomes easier to call someone else for a solution to a problem than to actually think about finding our own. Kids need to go through the process of trial and error, to learn to think for themselves, to develop their inner resources which empower them and give them opportunities to be creative.
If we adults let ourselves be consumed by all our various technologies, we actually create attention deficits wherever we go. When we pay attention actively and wholly to our personal connections, we enrich our lives and the lives of others. Let´s do what it takes now to stop the attention deficit that´s developing socially by consciously moderating when, where and how much we´re involved in all the advanced technologies which keep coming. We cannot let them diminish our humanity!