On Wednesday I received 72 e-mails, not counting junk, and only two text
messages. It was a quiet day but, then again, I’m not including the
telephone calls. I’m also not including the deafening and pointless
announcements on a train journey to Wakefield – use a screen, jerks – the
piercingly loud telephone conversations of unsocialised adults and the
screaming of untamed brats. And, come to think of it, why not include the
junk e-mails? They also interrupt. There were 38. Oh and I’d better throw in
the 400-odd news alerts that I receive from all the websites I monitor via
my iPhone.
I was – the irony! – trying to read a book called Distracted: The Erosion of
Attention and the Coming Dark Age by Maggie Jackson. Crushed in my train, I
had become the embodiment of T S Eliot’s great summary of the modern
predicament: “Distracted from distraction by distraction”. This is, you
might think, a pretty standard, vaguely comic vignette of modern life – man
harassed by self-inflicted technology. And so it is. We’re all distracted,
we’re all interrupted. How foolish we are! But, listen carefully, it’s
killing me and it’s killing you.
David Meyer is professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. In 1995
his son was killed by a distracted driver who ran a red light. Meyer’s
speciality was attention: how we focus on one thing rather than another.
Attention is the golden key to the mystery of human consciousness; it might
one day tell us how we make the world in our heads. Attention comes
naturally to us; attending to what matters is how we survive and define
ourselves.
The opposite of attention is distraction, an unnatural condition and one that,
as Meyer discovered in 1995, kills. Now he is convinced that chronic,
long-term distraction is as dangerous as cigarette smoking. In particular,
there is the great myth of multitasking. No human being, he says, can
effectively write an e-mail and speak on the telephone. Both activities use
language and the language channel in the brain can’t cope. Multitaskers fool
themselves by rapidly switching attention and, as a result, their output
deteriorates.
The same thing happens if you talk on a mobile phone while driving – even
legally with a hands-free kit. You listen to language on the phone and lose
the ability to take in the language of road signs. Worst of all is if your
caller describes something visual, a wallpaper pattern, a view. As you
imagine this, your visual channel gets clogged and you start losing your
sense of the road ahead. Distraction kills – you or others.
Chronic distraction, from which we all now suffer, kills you more slowly.
Meyer says there is evidence that people in chronically distracted jobs are,
in early middle age, appearing with the same symptoms of burn-out as air
traffic controllers. They might have stress-related diseases, even
irreversible brain damage. But the damage is not caused by overwork, it’s
caused by multiple distracted work. One American study found that
interruptions take up 2.1 hours of the average knowledge worker’s day. This,
it was estimated, cost the US economy $588 billion a year. Yet the rabidly
multitasking distractee is seen as some kind of social and economic ideal.
Meyer tells me that he sees part of his job as warning as many people as
possible of the dangers of the distracted world we are creating. Other
voices, particularly in America, have joined the chorus of dismay. Jackson’s
book warns of a new Dark Age: “As our attentional skills are squandered, we
are plunging into a culture of mistrust, skimming and a dehumanising merger
between man and machine.”
Mark Bauerlein, professor of English at Emory University in Atlanta, has just
written The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young
Americans and Jeopardises Our Future. He portrays a bibliophobic generation
of teens, incapable of sustaining concentration long enough to read a book.
And learning a poem by heart just strikes them as dumb.
In an influential essay in The Atlantic magazine, Nicholas Carr asks: “Is
Google making us stupid?” Carr, a chronic distractee like the rest of us,
noticed that he was finding it increasingly difficult to immerse himself in
a book or a long article – “The deep reading that used to come naturally has
become a struggle.”
Instead he now Googles his way though life, scanning and skimming, not pausing
to think, to absorb. He feels himself being hollowed out by “the replacement
of complex inner density with a new kind of self – evolving under the
pressure of information overload and the technology of the ‘instantly
available’”.
“The important thing,” he tells me, “is that we now go outside of ourselves to
make all the connections that we used to make inside of ourselves.” The
attending self is enfeebled as its functions are transferred to cyberspace.
“The next generation will not grieve because they will not know what they have
lost,” says Bill McKibben, the great environmentalist.
McKibben’s hero is Henry Thoreau, who, in the 19th century, cut himself off
from the distractions of industrialising America to live in quiet
contemplation by Walden Pond in Massachusetts. He was, says McKibben,
“incredibly prescient”. McKibben can’t live that life, though. He must
organise his global warming campaigns through the internet and suffer and
react to the beeping pleading of the incoming e-mail.
“I feel that much of my life is ebbing away in the tide of minute-by-minute
distraction . . . I’m not certain what the effect on the world will be. But
psychologists do say that intense close engagement with things does provide
the most human satisfaction.” The psychologists are right. McKibben
describes himself as “loving novelty” and yet “craving depth”, the
contemporary predicament in a nutshell.
Ironically, the companies most active in denying us our craving for depth, the
great distracters – Microsoft, Google, IBM, Intel – are trying to do
something about this. They have formed the Information Overload Research
Group, “dedicated to promoting solutions to e-mail overload and
interruptions”. None of this will work, of course, because of the
overwhelming economic forces involved. People make big money out of
distracting us. So what can be done?
The first issue is the determination of the distracters to create young
distractees. Television was the first culprit. Tests clearly show that a
switched-on television reduces the quality and quantity of interaction
between children and their parents. The internet multiplies the effect a
thousandfold. Paradoxically, the supreme information provider also has the
effect of reducing information intake.
Bauerlein is 49. As a child, he says, he learnt about the Vietnam war from
Walter Cronkite, the great television news anchor of the time. Now teenagers
just go to their laptops on coming home from school and sink into their
online cocoon. But this isn’t the informational paradise dreamt of by Bill
Gates and Google: 90% of sites visited by teenagers are social networks.
They are immersed not in knowledge but in “gossip and social banter”.
“They don’t,” says Bauerlein, “grow up.” They are “living off the thrill of
peer attention. Meanwhile, their intellects refuse the cultural and civic
inheritance that has made us what we are now”.
The hyper-connectivity of the young is bewildering. Jackson tells me that one
study looked at five years of e-mail activity of a 24-year-old. He was found
to have connections with 11.7m people. Most of these connections would be
pretty threadbare. But that, in a way, is the point. All internet
connections are threadbare. They lack the complexity and depth of real-world
interactions. This is concealed by the language.
Join Facebook or MySpace and you suddenly have “friends” all over the place.
Of course, you don’t. These are just casual, tenuous electronic pings.
Nothing could be further removed from the idea of friendship.
These connections are severed as quickly as they are taken up – with the click
of a mouse. Jackson and everyone else I spoke to was alarmed by the
potential impact on real-world relationships. Teenagers are being groomed to
think others can be picked up on a whim and dropped because of a mood or
some slight offence. The fear is that the idea of sticking with another
through thick and thin – the very essence of friendship and love – will come
to seem absurd, uncool, meaningless.
One irony that lies behind all this is the myth that children are good at this
stuff. Adults often joke that their 10-year-old has to fix the computer. But
it’s not true. Studies show older people are generally more adept with
computers than younger. This is because, like all multitaskers, the kids are
deluding themselves into thinking that busy-ness is depth when, in fact,
they are skimming the surface of cyberspace as surely as they are skimming
the surface of life. It takes an adult imagination to discriminate, to make
judgments; and those are the only skills that really matter.
The concern of all these writers and thinkers is that it is precisely these
skills that will vanish from the world as we become infantilised
cyber-serfs, our entertainments and impulses maintained and controlled by
the techno-geek aristocracy. They have all noted – either in themselves or
in others – diminishing attention spans, inability to focus, a loss of the
meditative mode. “I can’t read War and Peace any more,” confessed one of
Carr’s friends. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more
than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”
The computer is training us not to attend, to drown in the sea of information
rather than to swim. Jackson thinks this can be fixed. The brain is
malleable. Just as it can be trained to be distracted, so it can be trained
to pay attention. Education and work can be restructured to teach and
propagate the skills of concentration and focus. People can be taught to
turn off, to ignore the beep and the ping.
Bauerlein, dismayed by his distracted students, is not optimistic. Multiple
distraction might, he admits, be a phase, and in time society will
self-correct. But the sheer power of the forces of distraction is such that
he thinks this will not happen.
This, for him, puts democracy at risk. It is a form of government that puts “a
heavy burden of responsibility on our citizens”. But if they think Paris is
in England and they can’t find Iraq on a map because their world is a social
network of “friends” – examples of appalling ignorance recently found in
American teenagers – how can they be expected to shoulder that burden?
This may all be a moral panic, a severe case of the older generation wagging
its finger at the young. It was ever thus. But what is new is the assiduity
with which companies and institutions are selling us the tools of
distraction. Every new device on the market is, to return to Eliot, “Filled
with fancies and empty of meaning / Tumid apathy with no concentration”.
These things do make our lives easier, but only by destroying the very selves
that should be protesting at every distraction, demanding peace, quiet and
contemplation. The distracters have product to shift, and it’s shifting. On
the train to Wakefield, with my new 3G iPhone, distracted from distraction
by distraction, I saw the future and, to my horror, it worked.
i have worked in computers for 16 years and come to the conclusion that they are a bad thing, so now work as a philosopher. I have no computer or internet at home but i do sometimes use a web cafe.
i am not on facebook or myspace, they are insane, i go to the local pub instead
jason palmer, london,
I'm also a high school student (17), and I agree with Bridget. Yes, there are shockingly clueless teenagers, but I have a feeling that's always been the case. I think the most effective way to address the isue is to slow the pace of people's lives - obviously easier said than done.
Lindsey, Cedar Rapids, IA, USA
I'm sure someone wrote a similar article about TV/Video being a distractor when I was a kid. There will always be a big distractor, but then we all grow up and now we are looking at the kids of today and worrying about the same things.
fakiee, london,
I don't know how other people use Facebook, but my Facebook friends are all people I know in the "real" world. Many are people I met overseas who are now living in different locations. Facebook is a way of keeping that connection alive. I also re-connected with a friend from high school that way.
Cynthia, Beaverton, OR,
I'm a 15 year old high school student and I had no trouble at all reading this. The facts about teenagers absorbing themselves into the internet are all true, I know I'm on it about three hours of every day, but who isn't nowadays? I know many teenagers that read for fun, and they can concentrate.
Bridget, Santa Clarita, USA
I'm constantly multi-tasking, and to balance that kind of brain activity, I read long science & politics pieces (and keep a world map handy). I mostly read non-fiction, but I read a 700-page novel to flex my imaginative muscles. It's good sense, not morality--if you only eat junk there's a cost.
Callie, Washington DC, US
What a load of nonsense. People skim articles on the ‘net to determine authenticity. If you are reading something that you know, or believe, is credible, you pay attention.
Don’t look outside and place blame, look inside and address the issue.
Chris, Perth, Australia
Has anyone ever considered that maybe its not the technology that makes people stupid, but the people themselves? I was able to read this article easily. It may be easy to be distracted in today's world, but the people who let it affect their daily life simply have no clue how to prioritize.
Nick, concord, USA
Yes, I too barely made it past the first paragraph before I was distracted by the add on the right with the union jack on a lightbulb. I'll probably forward this article to someone who will wonder why I didn't read it myself. Of course I only forward links so that people will get the gestalt.
K, Norfolk,
A cynic is a man who knows the ----price---- [name] of everything but the -------value-----[meaning] of nothing
O Wilde.
It is an option- yes, but it can be heavily addictive.
I noticed this a while ago in my own habits. I am trying to find a way to live with no continuous web service
nicholas ceron, hobe sound, fl
Science is NOT a sad, ignorant old man with an axe to grind. Walter Cronkite > the internet? Give me a break.
"their intellects refuse the cultural and civic inheritance that has made us what we are now." THAT'S A GOOD THING!!
Michael, Perth, Australia
Which is a stronger connection -- locating a place on a map or conversing online with someone who lives there?
Riven Homewood, Santa Rosa, CA, USA
I think there is a distinction between the people who can't distinguish between cities in Britain vs. France, the people who cannot find Iraq on a map (::cough:: "The Iraq-Pakistan border"-McCain). While there may be some small correlation, those people aren't the true web addicts...
Natalie, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Google is a tool. as any tool you can use it in a smart or a stupid way. use it with discipline, and you will be happy and enrich your life. i have enough of these attacks on Google. Emma
emma, Chicago, USA
Comments like Darcy Sharman's are exactly the point of the article -- that people aren't paying close enough attention. Appleyard never said using a social site means you can't find Iraq on a map; suggesting so only makes you sound like someone primed for a disagreement. Read, then think.
Christian Nunciato, Seattle, USA
Didn't really read this but i did notice the advert by google for a new 3G i phone and i can use that to buzz my mates on facebook which is well cool
Mark, Peterborough,
I also found this article very interesting, though I did stop in the middle to plug in and sync by blackberry. I agree in principle with much of what was said. As stated in a previous statement, some assumptions are a bit extreme. Social networking does not = meaningless connections for example.
Lesley, Olds, Canada
I had just finished a few pages of Proust's essay On Reading when the link to this article came to my attention. What wouldn't I give for a some time in an arbor profoundly silent...sorry, got to go my cell phones ringing!
Bob Farwell, Norwich, USA/CT
I also did not make it till the end of this article, I guess I'm done already, and I didn't even hit the big 3-0
Neterka, Zagreb, Croatia
Interesting article but I have some problems with the underlying assumptions. Not memorizing poetry=lack of intelligence? Teens can't tell the difference between online "friends" and real friends? Social networks=inability to find Irap on a map? Casual correlations lead to mistrust of the premise
Darcy Sharman, Abu Dhabi, UAE
The article should have talked about the possible benefits of multi-tasking. i say this, however I am adopting a simpler life where time is spent doing things that are important to me and not skimming tens of articles everyday like I have been.
Laura, Reston,VA,
I seem to be falling into the trap of thinking I'm an exception here - I'm a young programmer who spends at least 40 hours a week in front of a computer (it's my job).
But I although I read for recreation (for hours at a time), I skim a lot more than I thought I did before I considered the matter.
Lucas, Melbourne, Australia
Affluent parents can't always produce off spring that take the next step and be even better. I am sure there are plenty of young people out there who will take up the mantle of western civilization, solving your moral panic. The future is out there, it just might not be with the already affluent.
Dan , Iowa City, United States
Like a previous commenter, I am also a teenager. I was raised in a TV and Internet-free home until about when I hit my teen years. I believe that I am a better person because of that.. It's true that I spend too much time in electro-world now - and this article certain brought that to back light.
Anya, Sarasota, USA
I found this article to be fairly reactionary and lacking in any real insight. Reiterating "The Medium Is the Message" as applied to social networking and email lacks any real insight about the potential of these technologies, we can be taught to use them in different ways than we do now.
Colin, Brooklyn, NY, USA
I suppose, by this train of thought, that listening to This American Life can distract you, too. Shame on you who listen to riveting radio whilst driving!
s, stroudsburg, pa,
I think technology is not really the blame. It is our brain that is lazy and uses easy exits every time it can. It is only natural. I know my friend's cell phones number by memory only because the phone at my office has no speed dial.
Mauricio P., Torreon, Mexico
While reading this article, I was distracted twice. First, to rate this for the Firefox add on Stumble upon. Second, to email the article to a friend. My sense of immediacy is preventing me from absorbing the same articles that are warning me of it! How's that for irony!
Derek , Brisbane,
Thank you, this is truly a case of someone exactly articulating something you have known and felt in your gut for years, however cannot express, I am afraid however no one will listen. I have always been suspect of people who profess to much to be smart, ignorance is bliss.
James Joyce, Beijing, China
A lot of truth there. It is difficult to keep an ability to attend to anything in this age of mobiles and so on. I regularly inform youngsters offering something or other that I am not giving out my phone number, and they don't understand that. "But they want to contact you" - "they can want".
Dr. J. Gokhale, Bangalore, , India.
As a teen, I look at this article and see some references to my generation that I am well included in. This kind of idea is something that I had not yet considered and it raises a very convincing and alarming point.
From the standpoint of a 17 year old; reading this article made a difference. Thanks
Dan, Apple Valley,
I use the internet and read books on a daily basis I have seen no harm to my reading comprehension. I am a 21 year old engineering student, beside having terrible hand writing, I would say technology has only made me more productive. Younger generations are dumber b/c of our education system.
Rob, Cincinnati,
Every older generation criticizes the younger generation. That's life. It's hypocrisy. Gen Y kids eventually wake up and realize there is more to life then knowing what bar your friend is currently at. Nobody can deny that it is a positive thing that connects the partaking world 1 cpu at a time.
Mike, New York, USA
Wow... I think if you all read a few paper books now and then, we wouldn't have this trouble... And stop listening to your iPods. They're killing you too.
And for those of you who use mac and can't seem to concentrate... oh nvm, you're too stubborn. lol
Linus , Ithaca, USA
I find it amusing to see people blaming on their shoes the faults of their feet. The internet only reflects the will of its users. I wonder if the conservatives who today blame the internet for short attention spans will take the same attitude the next time stricter gun control legislation comes up.
Tristan Gray, Halifax, Canada
The thing is, Brian.....sorry must dash....the phone's ringing
Alan Coady, Edinburgh, Scotland
I've been in the computer field for over 20 years, and multi-tasking is a myth. I don't answer my cell phone while driving and I don't haul my laptop around when I go out for coffee. That the time for conversation or a good book.
Kevin Backmann, Dallas, TX , US
"...older people fiddle with the same silly crosswords..."
Research shows that older people who regularly do crosswords are far less likely to develop Alzheimer's.
I agree that distraction is a problem. But the Internet is like cheap, plentiful food: A good thing, but you have to control it.
Olwen, Seattle,
I have been training and tutoring students in the art of concentration. By putting the matter in strategic terms--for example, learning how to slip a quote into a conversation--teenagers and young adults quickly learn the power that accrues to them (the lesson has been around since antiquity).
Jeff Karon, Tampa, USA
Another thought: new technology may well spawn ways to help with the central problem here. For example, in the future (how far is hard to tell), someone who emails me might be first met by an online avatar who can answer low-level inquiries in a way acceptable to me. Sorting functions may rule.
Jeff Karon, Tampa, USA
I'm 29, I email, facebook, and I wish I could focus more. I do try. I also travel and watch lectures or films on my iPhone, while older people fiddle with the same silly crosswords. We blog, make music, post videos -we are a writing culture as much as a reading culture thanks to the digital age!
Kuhan Puvanesasingham, Toronto, Canada
Try reading a book after a week or so of intensive Internet research. And good luck with that, too! If you had ever wondered what it feels like to be mentally challenged, you will find out then.
Jon Monroe, Blue Hill,
I was writing a job application cover letter in my Googlemail account when a link to this article was shown. It looked interesting, so I spent 10 minutes reading it. My cover letter and CV are still unsent as their author was completely distracted by an article on distraction. And I'm at work!
Leo, NW London, UK
i would have thought this would have been pretty obvious, but as the problem is so bad right now, and shows no sign of it ever stopping in our culture, I fear it will only worsen. Possibly compounded by the efforts of Google to create ever more effective advertisements in the worsening economical crisis.
andrew corr, burton on trent, england
Well then, most of us, especially the more seniorly inclined, appear to agree that, er................ Hang on, I'd better go back and read it again!
Archie, Thrapston, England
The thing is that human being has invented technology to make daily activities easier but the technology is making humanmind lazy , even you have many activities to do, the techno is driving towards no-brain society where you have everything in your computer ...
Edgar, Bogota, Colombia
I enjoyed the article and am not sure things will happen as appears. People said children don't read any more and lo and behold Ms Rawlings appeared and children all over the world stood in line to buy her books. So I don't think things are as bad as they appear in the srticle
Renny, Ramat Hasharon, Israel
don't let things interrupt you... Ignore your inbox until you want to work on it, don't rush to pick up the phone to read that text... ignore the phone and let the answer machine field it...
in fact the best thing you can do is turn off sound themes so you don't get dinged when a message arrives...
pcooke, Gloucester,
Psychologists also play dirty, inconscionable tricks that can, and have, caused irreversible brain damage. What is self-criticism without guilt?
A.B., Cape Ann, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Great article. So I'm not the only person to suffer extreme annoyance at the bellowing nobodies on their mobiles aboard trains or the pleading animated ads tapping us on the shoulder repeatedly on websites! When i want to work, i stay up at night, switch off Outlook, and then really get productive.
iain, bedford, uk
I must disagree with one point made in the first paragraph, the reference to the announcements on the train. Although a screen would be helpful to most they are not so helpful to the blind!
Ignorance is not a pleasant attribute......
Clair, Liskeard, Cornwall
I'll rather have information when it's needed than not. The volume of information available reflects the pace at which soceity is moving. The fact that the author manges to pen this long piece inspite of the distractions shows one can be selective in what they pay attention to.
Kofi Ansah, London, United Kingdom
TL;DR
(translation for those internetz illiteratez who 'read' the Times, this article is: Too Long; Didn't Read)
Alexander De Large, London,
didn't Plato voice similar complaints about the invention of the alphabet ?
Steve, Burlington, Vermont, United States
Google in moderation is great, so is You Tube.
Overdosing on it aint!
I wonder how one correspondent calculates this info-overload has cost the USA $650 billion. That's almost an Iraqi invasion!
Certainly young heads are full of garbage - thanks to awful TV.
Thanks Mr Zappleyard!
Christophe wright, Newcastle,
This is a good article--what I read. I am sorry to say that while I agree with the first part, I jumped to the end to get the conclusion. 56 years old. This is serious.
William Hurst, Frederick, USA
This article is quaint in its conviction that just because we can be overloaded by the information age, we must be required to now "Google" our way through life. The internet is only a tool to be used sparingly. The real culprits of this overload are the "victims" themselves.
Peter, Chicago,
I'd have to disagree about the computer as the worst distraction bit. I reckon the mobile phone will go down as the worst thing ever invented.
judy, Liverpool, England
The message here is simple - be disciplined in your time management. Schedule time for email rather than having email on all the time. If you need reading time or thinking time schedule that too, make your diary available to those who needs to see it and they will know when you are busy and free.
Caroline, Edinburgh, Scotland
A few clarifications about our research at Basex, which you cite.
In 2005, we reported that "unnecessary interruptions plus recovery time" (the time it takes you to get back to where you were, in other words) cost the U.S. economy $588 billion p.a.
In 2007, we upped that number to $650 billion
Jonathan Spira, New York, N.Y., U.S.A.
Roisin: There will always be accomplished young folks like you, thank God. The problem is that there are fewer and fewer of them.
Gary Geoffrion, Cleveland, OH, USA
I recognise the symptoms in myself, a 55 yr old man, and I'm horrified. Is it any consolation that Appleyard feels the same ?
Well, slightly ... I thought I was alone!
Nick Moore, St Ouen, France
Being 17, I fit into the media's patronising stereotype of teenagers. I'd like to point out that, though I use the internet as much as my peers, I have sufficient concentration to analyse Virgil's Latin and be a classical musician. Though of course as I'm under 30 I must prefer Posh and Becks?
Roisin, Chichester, England
Faster communication through modern technology thwarts human comprehension which must ruminate. Understanding requires deliberation and emotional cognition. Modern technology bypasses this process. Recognition of images and facts is not understanding, but it's fertile ground for demagogues.
Jim Silberman, New York City, USA
It's our own responsibility to choose, use and limit tools available to us. Google, Facebook etc; none of them have been forced on us, they have become popular and succesful because we choose them. We only become over-reliant on them because we lack the imagination to limit their use effectively.
Damian Ondore, Reading, UK.
I know a lot of young people under 30 and am constantly surprised by how much gumph they know off Internet and how little they know of art, literature, philosophy, ( what is that ?) or news.Most have never read a book from page one to end.Yet know all the gossip off Youtube, and celebrity world,sad
D McGregor, St Mawes, UK
Years ago, people complained that television would cause social collapse because it was non-written and passive; the internet is both written and interactive, and, based almost exclusively on speculation, people are again predicting social collapse again with insufficient foundation in evidence.
James E. Petts, Burnham, England
Mral panic, maybe; more like another lucrative academic thesis to expoit and profit from. They said regional accents would die out with the influence of national TV in the 1970s and that is plainly not true. The ability to concentrate is an innate faculty no amount of distraction can eradicate.
Charles, Barcelona,
The author has very articulately explained why I have renamed generation Y as generation DUH.
Monroe, California, U.S.A.
Interesting article,very true.Here we don't use social networking such as My Space.We use the computer to access news and weather,plus we use it to gather information,the most recent,information on geothermal heating.Next week we start installing a system.The internet can be very useful.
ron, toronto,
Kids have been in distracting chaotic classrooms for too long..never mind 'Google' bring back separate desks and the 'no talking without hands up' rule in lessons.
YR, Ely, UK
As a 56- yr (English) mother of a son and daughter, teacher of (German) children, adults and children in English, living in Germany for over 30 years, I can only reinforce the old chestnut that most men and boys just can't handle multitasking. Not a criticism of men- just that females can do it !
Christine Müller, Bremen, Germany
I cannot read any article now that mentions "Google generation" or "YouTube generation". Utter media cliches.
Tony, Islington, London, UK
A very nicely written and interesting article. Thank you very much.
Best regards,
Miguel Furlock
Miguel, Sanlucar de Barrameda, Spain
I don't agree with your assessment of social network connections. What is different about this generation and the ones to follow is that all of their connections are reflected online - so there is no such thing as losing contact with someone. These friends are the last trusted source of information.
Bob Klein, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
It must be true, as I also could not finish the article and started to skim. Way too long. The author has not yet been affected by this distraction disease. I think part of the problem is the net offers so much info that you want to see as much as possible and we don't have time for that, so we skim
Kaylan, US,
Yesterday, while biking in mid-town Manhattan, an activity that requires the alertness of a soldier slipping through a forest full of snipers, I passed by a bicyclist pedaling the wrong way down a very busy street, balancing a pizza from the handlebars and talking on his cell phone. Maybe he lived.
Barbara, New York , USA
Thanks for an excellent article. That vague sense of the loss of self and concentration due to the way we interact with information in a modern, technological world is something that's been niggling at me for a while, but I've never quite been able to articulate it all so succinctly.
James Whale, Bristol,
The war of the Digital Immigrants against the Digital Natives has just begun...
Mo, Essex, U.K
once in a while times has good deep articles of journalism that make it worth come to your site.this is one of them.it took me a long time to finish reading (maybe because i'm portuguese and my secondary language is french) but it paid to go till the end.absolutely agree that internet (i use it a lo
antonio gomes, montreal, canada
Generation Y will be the easiest to enslave. Just give them free porn, music and cheap fatty food through advertising. But then the Baby Boomers said that about us Xs. However, they've all just lost their pension funds in the credit/liquidity crunch. I left the UK for NZ over six years ago. Nice.
Chris Curtis, Auckland, New Zealand
I totally agree with this. Here in Uni, I have no TV and and I am now addicted to YouTube. Who will have the patience to see a whole movie when you can see the best scenes on the net. I frequently get distracted and lost most of my patience to see a movie or read a business journal.
Leonidas N. Melissinos, Sunderland,
unfortunately i skimmed the middle part...but a very good and amusing article.
Azkaa Hassam, London , UK
I tried to get to the end of this article, I really did, but I got distracted....
James, Glasgow,