The irony is if I quit social media, I start devouring youtube, including both high quality video essays and general video slop. If I quit youtube, I'm inclined to binge watch TV. I sometimes wonder if I need a more dramatic act of "unplugging." As writer Manu Joseph says on substack:
"Yet, I do not believe it is true that attention spans have changed significantly over the decades. People’s minds have always wandered. They have always struggled to focus. And most of them couldn’t bear to spend too much time with their own minds.
The real world, outside the phone, is so glorified today. But consider this thing that happens in the real world. You’re at a party and someone comes up and says that inane but useful thing, “What’s up?” And even as you answer, he looks behind you for something more interesting, which is never there. This has happened for decades, and not just in conversations. In everything people did, they looked beyond to see if there was something more interesting, which they never found."
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"I don’t say there is no substance to the lament about modern attention spans. The fact that human attention was always fragile does not diminish the fact that the modern world has created extraordinary tools to facilitate distraction. A distraction is a kind of boredom that looks like entertainment, which saves you momentarily from another kind of boredom. Today, a slab of metal and glass at nearly everyone’s disposal captures the wandering mind and carries it far away, to some limbo. You could be working and reach for your phone, or an icon on your laptop, and suddenly ten minutes of your life are gone just like that."
https://manujoseph.substack.com/p/the-world-is-wrong-about-y...