After a recent conversation with a friend, I’ve been contemplating the long-term effects of the use of social media. Social networking intrigues me beyond any other advancing communication technology because of its broad use and versatility. However, I have also been thinking about the practices we have been conditioning our brains to accept over the last few years. Is it healthy or beneficial to receive information in 140 characters or less, or are we shortening our attention span too much?
Throughout history, human beings have always utilized short versions of communication. From hieroglyphics to Morse Code, and various forms of shorthand in between, language has been modified for thousands of years in a way that systems to decode them must also be created. Social networking sites are no different in this aspect. We are forced to reduce thoughts to a certain character limit and have created URL shorteners to go with it if we have anything more to say! Then again, we also condition our children to adhere to the same practices. Toys with flashy lights and jingles are usually on a timer that plays for a few minutes and then they shut off. Thus, conditioning the attention span into clips of mental focus is how we choose to spend the most crucial developmental times in life.
Do you think social media and social networking are harmful to the attention span or is history just repeating itself?
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