In a fast paced world with fast paced technology, it’s so easy to switch up what we’re looking at with the click of a button or the push of a key. Apps like Vine and Twitter make it so easy to scroll through ideas faster than ever before with 6-second and 140-character limits. But with the ability to turn our thoughts to completely new ideas in the blink of an eye, are we losing our abilities to concentrate?
Think about it. Society is constantly pushing to get things done faster, and that puts us in a state where we firmly believe we no longer have time. Suddenly sitting down to watch a two-hour movie has become more of a chore than an indulgence, and why bother when Vine can give you the same cinematic pleasure in only 6 seconds? Buzzfeed articles that lay everything out in bullets have made reading novels a headache. Just seeing a paragraph has suddenly turned us off, and now rather than taking the time to read through something that may be interesting, we’re taking the time to look for the quickest summary of it instead.
That’s why concentrating on a lecture in school or reading a textbook has become that much harder. People don’t have the tension spans that they used to, before everything was summarized in bullets and said in 140 characters or less. When is the last time you were able to truly concentrate on something for a solid half hour? Smartphones also add fuel to the fire with the way we can click in and out of apps in a matter of seconds. Or even being able to open and close tabs on our browsers. Even when it comes to music, people flip radio stations or songs within a matter of thirty seconds because they lose interest so quickly. It’s as if taking our time isn’t even an option anymore.
Without any serious effort to ease ourselves back into heavy concentration, this may only continue to spiral downwards. People are only trying to move forward, competing to see who can put out the best product in the least amount of time. Wasting time is out of the question, because we’re so concerned with how much we have left. But if we lose our ability to concentrate, will we ever end up being able to accomplish anything at all?
