Online Attention Deficit Disorder

This David Brooks article, "Building Attention Span," from the New York Times a couple weeks ago is brief, but interesting - and coincides with an ongoing discussion at our house about social media. Brooks reports on some research that suggests that the brain is being reshaped by online habits so that it is becomes more "fluid," meaning it moves easily from topic to topic, engages only on the surface level, quickly processes information, moves on, and forgets it.  Online socializing occurs with similar fluidity also - from one topic to another, little engagement, lots of brief encounters.

On the other hand, reading print matter encourages the brain to convert information into knowledge. The brain on print makes more connections, questions material, and ponders issues and ideas. Person to person socializing also occurs in this slower, deeper form - Brooks compares the difference between online learning to print learning as like the difference between attending a cocktail party and being at a book club.  Lots of flitting around between many topics vs. sitting and discussing one topic at length.  Brooks refers to the slower learning as "crystallized intelligence":

"Crystallized intelligence is the ability to use experience, knowledge and the products of lifelong education that have been stored in long-term memory. It is the ability to make analogies and comparisons about things you have studied before. Crystallized intelligence accumulates over the years and leads ultimately to understanding and wisdom.

The online world is brand new, but it feels more fun, effortless and natural than the offline world of reading and discussion. It nurtures agility, but there is clear evidence by now that it encourages a fast mental rhythm that undermines the ability to explore narrative, and place people, ideas and events in wider contexts.

There is a place for both types of knowledge - we need the ability both to gather information and to make a story out of it - as well as both kinds of socializing. Mixers and cocktail parties have their purpose, just as book clubs and long intimate discussions over coffee and dessert do.

I suffer from alternating attraction and revulsion to online socializing. My kids all want to be on Instagram now, and part of me thinks, fine, whatever, it's a nice way to share updates with your friends and family about neat things you have done and seen.  I like to see photos of my nieces and nephews doing cute things and making funny faces. Seeing photos of each other cements a relationship that can only be cultivated over a long distance at this point since we live far from family.

But on the other hand, Instagram, and other photocentric social media sites, are also a way of defining yourself with images.  What you look like, what you like to look at, what looks interesting/fascinating/pretty to you... It does not reveal much about your thoughts and your connections to these images or to anything else.  It is surface information only. And people "read" Instagram by scrolling quickly down a variety of similar photos.  Does the narrative that forms from this type of communication move beyond the barest elements of plot?  There is no doubt that it encourages more interest in appearance than in character - other than encouraging a development of a simplistic, stereotypical type of character (athlete, yogi, inspirational messenger, politico, fashionista, etc.)

I don't think avoiding social media is the right answer - that would be like retreating from the world altogether for teenagers.  But the time and attention devoted to it needs to be balanced by deeper moments, time spent reading or talking or playing or studying or working for pay or on hobbies. The temptation this summer has been to let the kids have extra media time because I have so many things to do, but this article is a good reminder to engage, to sit down to read a book together or play euchre or cook together. Summer is flying by - one more week in our current house.  Packers come on Monday.  Soon the kids will be back in school and we won't have time for these engagements.  And in a little less than a month, I'll be taking my first born off to college - my kid who uses social media the least. Hoping to stayed engaged through the good old fashioned phone.