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My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

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Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#131

Post by thrown_22 »

blindmute wrote: post #128
kristianc wrote: post #43

Although the attention span myth is one of those things that is taken to be almost idiomatic, there’s actually very little empirical evidence for it. There’s no such thing as an ‘average’ attention span, and even for those individual tasks it would be very much context dependent (where I’m sitting, what I’m doing at the time, my general opinion of the author, the mood I’m in). It’s a nice story, and it will invariabl…

There's simply no empirical evidence that you love your wife/mother, so it would be foolish to believe that you do. Until a study is funded there's just no way for you to know. Trust science

>There's simply no empirical evidence that you love your wife/mother

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2954158/

Cute quip, but wrong.

Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#132

Post by thrown_22 »

jmt_ wrote: post #118
dumpsterlid wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an extremely crucial point. Though I do think social media apps are designed to be addictive in a negative way, the narrative that they are destroying our attention spans has absolutely no backing in science and yet it is taken almost as common sense.

Totally agree with both of you. I don't see this issue in terms of "attention span" per se, rather we now have an ever-present device that most often contains software engineered to grab as much of our attention as it possibly can. I can't think of anything similar past generations had that was close to this in terms of magnitude and accessibility. We all know the rat in a box will tap the dopamine button as many tim…

The printed book which could be shrunk to be carried in a pocket.

It was such a disruptive technology it lead to fake news plunging Europe into a century of wars and genocides: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wars_of_religion

Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#133

Post by MacsHeadroom »

Aeolun wrote: post #124
iratewizard wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone struggling, turning the screen to black and white helps. Less dopamine per hit makes it easier to break those habits.

Color filters under Accessability, for those on iOS.

Same place on Android, incidentally.

Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#134

Post by ellopoppit »

user_7832 wrote: post #111
ellopoppit wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be that smartphones and TV can cause ADHD? Before such electronic media, books were the main media, and inherently required and trained users to concentrate on one thing at a time for extended periods. TV and smartphones do the exact opposite

Unfortunately I'm not a doctor or researcher to be able to give a definitive answer, but I don't think these things can cause ADHD - though they can likely worsen symptoms, for both people who have it and those who don't. But I suspect such an effect would be reversible, unlike (genetic components of) ADHD.

There is no known gene which causes ADHD.

Like all other conditions in the DSM, there is no objective biological diagnostic criteria

Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#135

Post by thrown_22 »

>Last week at work, a colleague asked if anyone might be interested in participating in the corporate-wide “Read a book a week” [...] For example, I’ve listened to every book in Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series, and I eagerly await new ones. But when the latest book came out, Better Off Dead, I couldn’t make it past the first few chapters.

It's kind of astonishing that "read a book" somehow got turned into "have a book read to you" and that the author still doesn't manage to get it done.

Reading is fundamentally different to listening. One is active, the other passive.

Then the ending's conclusion is completely nonsensical:

>Some other challenges I’m still figuring out, like how to navigate a city without Google Maps. I bought a handful of paper maps and found myself looking at the area, trying to grok the logic of the streets and analyzing the area’s layout seemingly for the first time.

What do the skills of hunter gatherers have to do with clearer thinking?

Would life be better if instead of writing on a keyboard you only wrote on parchment made from the skins of animals you hunted? I imagine the authors writing would improve, only because there would be a lot less of it.

Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#136

Post by butUjust »

xerox13ster wrote: post #4

I did a digital detox in July of 2020, I had become overwhelmed with Discord and Reddit moderation and trying to Keep Up. I burned out hard. I turned off all electronics for a month and uninstalled the apps and restricted my phone use to calls and responding to 3 close friend's texts at a set time each day--I didn't keep it on me at all. No video games, no TV, no watch or music streaming. I had my library of local mu…

No post body was provided.

Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#137

Post by grogenaut »

christiangenco wrote: post #127
10x-dev wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of developing software without distractions, I like to recreate airplane conditions. I load devdocs.io in a persistent tab, get all the software I think I'd need for the day/weekend and turn on airplane mode. I don't need to Google everything - between devdocs, man pages and just figuring stuff out by myself, it can be very fun to code disconnected.

I've recently realized I'm uncharacteristically productive on airplanes. I did a deep read of the first 8 chapters of a book I've been meaning to read on my last long flight. I had every intention of continuing at the same pace through to the end as soon as I checked into my AirBnB. The moment I got internet back at touchdown marked the end of my progress on the book. This was... four days ago. I think some airplane…

I used to be able to code on airplanes but i just can't type in most seats given how cramped they are now.

that said I flew economy plus on lufthansa from seattle to frankfurt in 2019 and sat in the front left bulkhead seat. Being a premium seat they completely ignored the 3 bags I had up against the bulkhead at takeoff (safety rules and plastic utensils are for the cattle, comfort and metal cutlery are for those who pay). It was great. I had my latop comfortably on the folkd out tray, and I watched big hero 5 and 2 other shameless airplane movies on the pull up tv. I reviewed over 30 docs in offline mode, and was able to build a very good root cause and action plan (I was doing failure analysis).

A offline/online docs site would be quiet helpful as what styimies me from coding is not having that one dependency or one doc I need and having to pivot.

Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#138

Post by Barrin92 »

codemonkey-zeta wrote: post #59

> When I pulled up at a stoplight waiting for the light to change, I would instinctively reached for my phone (mounted on my dash) to check my email (personal + work), check ESPN, look up something on Amazon, etc. While pumping gas in the car, I’d whip out my phone while waiting. Stuck in line somewhere? Time for my phone. Waiting in an elevator? The phone. Riding the train? The phone. Going to the bathroom? Make sur…

>Any spare or idle moment?

It wouldn't even be that bad if it was just idle moments. If you're ever sitting in a cafe or restaurant or at the movies look around and see how often people bring their phone out during personal conversations or stuff they paid actual money to see. It is wild that barely anyone talks about how pervasive this is now.

Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#139

Post by user_7832 »

ellopoppit wrote: post #134
user_7832 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately I'm not a doctor or researcher to be able to give a definitive answer, but I don't think these things can cause ADHD - though they can likely worsen symptoms, for both people who have it and those who don't. But I suspect such an effect would be reversible, unlike (genetic components of) ADHD.

There is no known gene which causes ADHD. Like all other conditions in the DSM, there is no objective biological diagnostic criteria

Perhaps specifically saying gene isn't accurate, but adhd is highly heritable (anywhere between 40 to 80% depending on which paper you look at)

Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#140

Post by robocat »

kqr wrote: post #91
graeme wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you distinguish between ADHD vs modern distractability? Especially if someone showed no ADHD symptoms before smartphones Everyone has some distractability so curious about threshold

When it makes you effectively mentally handicapped (you literally need environmental adjustments in order to function) in at least two areas of life (work, relationships, household), it's clinical.

I would paraphrase the question as: is the ADHD a problem with brain chemistry§, or is it with the contextual environment? A common worldview is to split biological from environmental - an analogue to nature vs nurture.

I do agree with your definition of clinical. There are a lot of signals, even such as the article itself and the works it references, pointing towards the problem being our modern internet device environment. This article https://medium.com/@bradwray/ive-had-enough-of-teaching-2bae... is written by a teacher who is quitting teaching because most students won’t engage at school due to their devices (so probably clinical by your definition - “work” impacted and I’m guessing household too).

§ yeah, “brain chemistry” is conceptually unsound, but I couldn’t think of a better physical metaphor.

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