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Thursday, August 7, 2014
Shortened Attention Spans
In Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, the book mainly focuses around television and the portrayal of certain ideas and events. Perhaps this book holds even more emphasis over the media itself than television. As I read this book, it has had me thinking more and more about how the media was shown to Postman in 1985 and how it's shown today in 2014. The difference is almost imperceptible, with news anchors able to change the subject from flash floods to home cooking without skipping one beat. It struck me that the channel was there to inform but was just as much there to ENTERTAIN. They need you to keep coming back for more, and to do this, top stories won't always do. This got me wondering about the attention span of human beings now. Perhaps I'm reading to far into the workings of society, but maybe the obviously shortened attention span of people today is why the app "Vine" was created. With only six seconds to entertain and impress, it must be the quickest "hook" you will get in entertainment media. For those of you with only a six-second attention span, I'd like you to think about just how many ideas and genres of comedy you could span in just one minute. This absolutely blows my mind that there must be six second videos for people because we must be CONSTANTLY entertained. As you whiz by vine after vine you are constantly being exposed to fresh jokes and ideas. So, what do you think? Can we really amuse ourselves to death with this incredible new idea of comedy and entertainment? Is the media spending too much time on entertaining us rather than informing us?
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Ariana, you have made a fascinating point. You are correct about people watching and creating Vines just to be exposed to the fresh jokes and ideas. I, personally, am so amused by the six second videos that people create because I crave for that entertainment. I believe that we shouldn't be taking the time to replace the informative information for entertainment. Even though I find it highly amusing, we should find the balance in between.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that media has shortened our attention span a bit. Many people including my self, have a hard time with reading these books and staying focused on them. Eventually I turn to the internet or my phone to distract myself from the book. I end up wasting my time looking for things that will entertain me instead of help me with my reading. If we're not careful eventually we will fall into media's trap of entertaining us without informing us.
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