OPINION (AN COLÚN): Our diminished attention span during the digital age

ONE of the most important things in life is the simple pastime of reading for pure pleasure. If you want to bring your brain up to a higher level than its quotidian, mundane and superficial plane then you need to get your hands on a hardcopy of a book (e-books, in my humble opinion, don't count; the format has to be paper, tactile, not digital). Preferably, the book shouldn't be pulp fiction. It's best to avoid a lot of the banal, empty-headed drivel that passes as literature these days. Aim for the books that are high-minded, philosophical, very emotional, very honest. Aim for the books which are going beneath the facade of life and telling us, showing us, this is what life can really be like with its complexity and pain, its nightmarish qualities and its joys.
I'm saying it's better to go for the high-minded books and avoid the lower grade, pulp stuff, not because I am a snob (I'm not a snob, no matter what people might claim!) but because I know it's essential to create small oases of reflection, calm and depth during our busy daily schedules. Great literature gives us perspective and deepens our minds, bringing us to another mental level altogether.
We live in an era of smartphones and instant gratification. More and more of us are spending less and less time engaged in immersive reading than previously. I read a recent article in the national press where the writer admitted that he had actually lost the ability for immersive reading because of the prevailing culture we find ourselves in. He asked himself, when was the last time he finished a book? When was the last time he read a novel? The answer was depressing. He reads a lot, including emails, newspapers, documents for research purposes, but it is rarely reading for pure pleasure, reading of an immersive quality. The suspicion arose that his brain had been rewired by the smartphone and the superficial culture of our contemporary world; rewired for the worst.
Maryanne Wolf, a professor at the University of California, makes this point. An expert in the science and art of reading, Professor Wolf's research came to the surprising conclusion that our brains aren't “wired” to read. Unlike speech, reading did not come naturally to homo sapiens. It was a skill, a facility, which we acquired; the acquisition of which was a tribute to the wonderful plasticity of our brains.
When we are immersed in a good book there are a number of things which we are enjoying: We are enjoying the feel of the book, the design of its cover; we take pleasure in the images which the text conjures in our mind, lingering on those images; we sometimes put the book down and reflect on what we have read; we sometimes put the book down and reflect on the nature of the human condition (battered by the winds of such forces as greed and lust), we reflect on the pain and suffering that is our human lot, and upon the redeeming quality of love (love for our spouse, friends, siblings). These reflections may lead us towards reading religious books, words of wisdom; they may lead us towards prayer or transcendental meditation. In other words, immersive reading brings us in touch with our soul, with the goodness, gentleness and wisdom that is possible in every human being.
Contemporary digital consumption is typically a very different skillset where the mind is seeking facts or is hopping from article to article (after only reading a paragraph or two) or is thoughtlessly scrolling through the screen only stopping for clickbait or something sensational or salacious. There are advantages to this butterfly type behaviour. For example, you can get answers to important questions quickly. Or you can swiftly find a lot of fantastic, inspirational quotations. Or it can be a good way to give the mind some chillout time after a period of intense work. The problem though is that this scrolling and hopping around has become too dominant in our society and we are spending less and less time in the mental spaces where our deeper selves reside.
Maryanne Wolf has noticed another problem. She says a lot of us no longer have the patience for immersive, reflective reading because we have been brainwashed by the skillset required to navigate the digital age. Ask yourself, when was the last time you read a book? (In asking yourself this I refer you back to the first two paragraphs of this article!) “Skimming is the new normal,” she says, “it's the new way of reading.” She outlines the implications of “a plastic reading circuit in a digital culture that emphasizes speed, immediacy, multi-tasking, continuous partial attention.” She points out that the “affordances of reading on screen lead us to a new normal, one in which text length and complexity, and the reader's memory and concentration are proving more challenging.” She says some studies are pointing out now that people's attention span is half what it was, and people's memory is also half of what it once was. “We are splitting our attention too much for our working memory to function optimally,” she remarks. When we examine our own habits we will see the truth of what she's saying: “Perhaps you have already noticed how the quality of your attention has changed the more you read on screens and on digital devices. Perhaps you have felt a pang of something subtle that is missing when you seek to immerse yourself in a favourite book. Like a phantom limb, you remember who you were as a reader, but cannot summon that 'attentive ghost' with the joy you once felt in being transported somewhere outside the self to that interior space. It is more difficult still with children, whose attention is continuously distracted and flooded by stimuli that will never be consolidated in their reservoirs of knowledge.”
A good way of thinking about these different digital and analogue skillsets is to think about them being like the difference between good, wholesome food and fast food. A certain amount of fast food does you no harm and can be very useful when you are extremely busy; but too much of it and the body begins to rot. Similarly with our minds, unless we set aside sufficient time in our lives for good, beneficial reading then our mental states will begin to rot. As our minds rot we become less compassionate and forgiving, less creative, and more judgemental and harsh. We need to achieve a balance in our lives, an equilibrium of our inner world between these digital and analogue skillsets. Wolf points the way towards this balance. She advocates the development of the “bi-literate brain” where we understand and utilise the benefits of the digital mindset but don't allow it to let our immersive reading mindset be overlooked and unpractised.