Living with Distraction and Diminished Attention 

It is no secret that within the last decade social media has become increasingly popular since the dawn of the smartphone. Everyone is involved in it, and now, a lot of people feel as though they cannot escape it. A lot of world events, viral moments, and interesting concepts and revelations are usually shared through social media for the first time now, which contributes to people's inclination to be on social media so that they can witness these things firsthand. In the age of social media that we have slowly grown accustomed to, at times it can feel as though anything interesting that adequately stimulates your brain comes from your phone, so we start to spend more time on it as we slowly tune out the reality of the world around us. 

Recently, I took notice of my social media usage and decided to look into my phone's analytics to see exactly how much time I spent on my phone, as well as the various apps I shift between. Overall, I found that I spend at least 2 hours on my phone every day on average, if not more. Furthermore, the most used app of mine is TikTok, with a total of 7 hours on that app for the week, almost a full shift of work spent on one app. Now, there is potentially an entire blog post that could be made to discuss how TikTok is able to reliably get their customers to come back and stay on the app but for the purpose of this blog post that lengthy topic would best be sidelined for now. In total, I spent 20 hours and 42 minutes on my phone this past week and of that time, I spent 15 hours and 26 minutes just using various social media apps. Nearly a full day I spent just on my phone scrolling through endless content to stimulate my brain. Now in retrospect, I cannot help but wonder, why did I even bother? I am sure I have learned a lot during this past week from the social media content, but in retrospect, none of it has furthered my goals or helped my ambitions; so why did I spend so much time on my phone? Well, the simple answer is that I wanted to at the moment so I did, however, why did I want to?

This past unit, we spent a lot of time on James Williams and a lot of the arguments and concepts he brought to the table in regards to how we, as humans, have to adapt to the age of social media so that we do not allow it to consume our lives and make us unproductive. Instead, we need to use it as a tool, not something that preys on our innate need to be liked and decreasing attention span. In this new era, social media has taken over and it is hard to escape it, but that has been the point the entire time. Every social media app, from TikTok to Facebook, has the end goal of wanting as many people using their site as possible and ensuring they spend as much time as they are willing on the site. In addition to this, research on human psychology has been used to manipulate people into spending more time on their phones and applications, so it really is no wonder how our collective attention span has decreased and how we live in a state of the constant distraction of what could come next or what we feel we need to see in the future. No one wants to feel left out of the fun, so we scroll through and keep up with the trends. Furthermore, by design, a lot of social media applications are intended to be tailored to one's own likes, interests, desires, and weaknesses. This makes it so that when we start to think "maybe I should get off my phone and do something" something can immediately distract us, keep our attention away from the previous thought, and keep engaging and consuming media content. 

Last week, I engaged in some challenges that tested my ability to restrain from my phone use and engage in the real world more than I had in the previous weeks. Though it was for an assignment, I still think the various tests I put myself through were worthwhile. One of them, I had to refrain from using TikTok for the day. Initially, I thought that I would have an easy time and could get through it without it really affecting me. Come to find later when I am sitting on the toilet or waiting outside for my dog to finish her business so I can let her inside, this challenge was actually taking an effort of me to complete. I had to actively choose to put my phone down and just live with the world around me. Furthermore, a different task asked me to take notice of the different sounds around me. For that activity, I decided to go outside with my dog and sit there for an hour or so. I began to hear things that I previously tuned out and paid no attention to; the other dogs barking in the neighborhood, the wind blowing and rustling the leaves, the clucks of my neighbor's chickens, the distant wind chime that I could barely hear, and the humming of cars passing by. While I am sure I "heard" these things before when I was on my phone, however, I was distracted and had my attention on short videos, so I likely became habituated to the different sounds because they did not mean anything to my goals at the time. 

All in all, I can now admit that, yeah, I do probably use my phone more than necessary and I am prone to be distracted. Additionally, sure, my attention span does suck and sometimes I do blow things off if I am uninterested. However, the first step to solving anything is recognizing the problem, so hopefully, I can become more mindful of my social media use, and choose to spend more time at the moment in front of me and the opportunities it brings.